A Dangerous Game
by dancer-me
Summary: Sakura is living a normal life as Konoha's top surgeon when Sasuke shows up in her ER under a different name. Suddenly her life is turned upside down as she gets caught up in a clandestine mission that's far bigger than anyone involved had imagined. AU
1. One of Those Days

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter 1: One of Those Days**

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><p>"Good morning, Dr. Haruno!"<p>

Sakura smiled at the young nurse sitting at the front desk in the surgical ward as she approached.

"Good morning Seira," Sakura greeted happily, placing her travel mug of coffee on the counter as she began to rifle through the stack of files nearby. "What kind of morning have we had?"

The nurse made a face as she pushed back, rolling across the small office on her chair and reaching out for a particular binder.

"The usual."

Sakura laughed, a hint of exhaustion evident in her voice as she brushed her bangs from her eyes with one hand and took a long sip of her delicious, hot caffeinated beverage.

"Hectic, huh?"

"Incredibly." Seira agreed as she rolled back to her desk, letting the huge binder drop onto the raised counter with a _thunk._

Sakura reached a hand out and spun the binder around so she could read the label on the spine. Quirking an eyebrow, Sakura glanced down at Seira questioningly.

"What's this?"

"The reason you got called in early," Seira sighed regretfully, "Apparently some really important guy – I have no idea who he is so I think he just _thinks_ he's important – wants a consultation for a big surgery he may have to have. He wants the best," Seira informed as she scooted her chair down the desk to grasp the ringing phone. As she lifted the receiver, Seira grinned at her and finished, "and you're the best. The meeting is in an hour – I hear he's a real gem. Have fun!"

Sakura grumbled around the lip of her mug as Seira answered her call with a wink that told her 'he's a real gem' was not meant to be a compliment of the man in any way.

So it was going to be one of _those_ days, was it?

Snatching the binder from the counter with a light-hearted glare back at Seira, Sakura trudged the rest of the way down the hall to her office. If she only had an hour to study these files and prepare for the consultation, she needed to get started, pronto.

"I saw that, Mr. Kawasaki," Sakura called out in a sing-song voice as she breezed past the open door to Daichi Kawasaki's room. Sakura had a soft spot for the older gentleman who was admitted for heart problems. He was a jovial and friendly man who gave Sakura what she liked to refer to as 'Grandpa' vibes, but the man had a real vice when it came to foods that weren't good for him. He also had friends that managed to sneak in his favourite meals, anyway.

Back-tracking a couple of steps and slipping into Daichi's room, Sakura wandered over to his bed, placing her binder temporarily down on the bedside table.

Daichi grumbled as he lay back in his bed, leaving his cholesterol packed breakfast neglected on his table.

"You see everything, don't you Miss Sakura?" He accused her lightly as she began a check-up.

"Oh yes, Mr. Kawasaki, _nothing_ gets past me," Sakura countered with a smile as she touched her fingers to his neck, feeling his pulse.

As she slipped her stethoscope from around her neck, Daichi shot her a concerned frown.

"I'm not surprised," he answered, "considering you always seem to be in the hospital. Weren't you here late last night?"

Why yes, Mr. Kawasaki, she had been. She'd worked a twenty-four hour shift already, and had headed home for some glorious sleep sometime around two in the morning. Her Blackberry's incessant ringing had woken her at six AM. The voice on the other end of the line – she'd been a tad too sleep disoriented to really care whose voice it had been – had told her she needed to head back to the hospital, stat, because her services were needed.

She really needed to work on that whole 'responding to those that sound like they are of authority' – thing she had going on, otherwise _anyone_ might end up calling her in the middle of the night telling her to do things. Sakura felt better in knowing that she'd likely subconsciously recognized the voice – not to mention she got calls from the hospital like that all the time – and that's why she'd so readily gotten dressed, tied her long pink hair up, and headed out the door.

She was supposed to have had most of the day off, her next shift not having been until two PM. Unfortunately, things changed when a self-important man wanted a consultation with her about a surgery she had yet to read up on.

"A beautiful, talented young lady like yourself should be getting some sleep and taking care of herself." The older man admonished.

Sakura smiled brightly at him at his compliment. Daichi always flattered her every time she stopped by for a visit or a check-up. It was almost comical how much his words maintained her self-esteem after her brutal break-up last month. Romance? Who needs it, anyway?

Sighing, Sakura placed the stethoscope against his chest and had a listen.

"Trust me, Mr. Kawasaki, I try." At the incredulous look he shot her, Sakura let her lips quirk further into a smile, "Well, as much as a busy surgeon can. _I'm_ in high demand," Sakura teased as she tapped the binder she'd left on the side table.

"Oh? What's that?"

"Apparently some bigwig fellow wants a consultation with me," Sakura explained as she placed the stethoscope back around her neck, "enough to merit me being called in early. You see, I would be getting beauty sleep right now were it not for him. Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually live here."

Sakura took a swig of her temporarily forgotten coffee and let the warm liquid sooth her as it slipped down her throat. No, she didn't live at the hospital, but she really did work enough long hours at Konoha General that she wasn't surprised by the rumour.

She was a bit of a workaholic but really, what surgeon wasn't? And when you're the top surgeon, breaks and vacation were few and far between if you even _wanted_ them.

"I guess this old man will take his grumbling his way," Daichi nodded his head towards her binder, "if I ever see him. Don't stay cooped up here all day now, Miss Sakura."

Scooping the binder back up under her arm that held coffee in hand, Sakura snatched his unhealthy breakfast from his table. "Thanks for breakfast, Mr. Kawasaki," She smiled as she made her way to the door, "I'll send the nurses in with something healthy. You know if you keep sneaking in this stuff and eating it you're never going to be healthy enough to leave, right?"

The old man nodded solemnly, even as he cast a longing glance at the sausage, egg and cheese breaded goodness that she held in hand.

"I know, I know..."

"Good! Rest easy!" Sakura called cheerfully as she stepped out of the room. Breakfast, coffee and work in hand, Sakura finally made it to her office.

Falling down into her wheeled chair, Sakura dropped the binder onto her desk. With another gulp of coffee, Sakura cracked the binder open and began to scan the files.

-o0o-

Dusting her hands off on her green scrubs, Sakura leaned against the front desk with a frustrated snort.

Seira glanced her way as she shuffled files around on her desk. Hesitantly, she inquired, "So how'd the consultation go?"

Sakura released another snort and crossed her arms in front of her, crinkling her white lab coat at her sides.

"Not fun, eh?"

"If by 'real gem' you meant a super creepy self-important son of a bitch with a penchant to drawl and give orders that sound like requests, then you really _did_ prepare me for _that_ meeting."

With a huff, Sakura futilely blew several of her bangs out of her face only to have them fall back against her forehead.

"Hey now, I saw him for like a second," Seira defended herself as she came out from around her desk and leaned beside Sakura. "everything else I knew about him was just staff gossip. So it was really that bad?"

Sakura sighed and dug her hands into her pockets as she leaned her head back to examine the roof tiles.

"He wasn't unpleasant, per se, it was just a surprisingly unpleasant experience." Sakura tilted her head to look at the nurse who was quickly becoming her confidant and friend, "did you get a chance to read over his files?"

The brunette shook her head.

"Well, they're _weird_. I can't put my finger on exactly what about them makes my spidey-senses tingle, but there's something off about them."

Seira hummed in thought. "Maybe he travels a lot and his records are in shambles from multiple hospitals putting them together? Conglomerate documents like that are _always_ troublesome."

Sakura let the thought roll around in her head for a moment. She had had an idea along the same lines.

"Yeah, maybe." She agreed, looking back up at her favoured roof tile, "He definitely also has problems. I can understand why he wanted a consultation with the best," Sakura mentally grimaced at the information she'd gathered from his documents and their meeting, "not to sound cocky, of course."

Seira laughed and shook her head, turning around against the counter and leaning over to reach for the phone that was once again, ringing.

"You_ are_ the best, Dr. Haruno. I swear you're a large part of why this hospital is so popular."

Sakura smiled at the girl as she answered the phone, making affirmative noises as she furiously scribbled on a notepad. A small frown crossed Sakura's face as the nurse cast a loaded glance in her direction.

Oh God, what _now_?

Seira hung up the phone and held up her notepad, reading over her scribbles. With a sigh, Seira seemed to resign herself to telling Sakura what was up as she turned to face the pinkette.

"Dr. Yakushi is downstairs and on his way up."

Sakura blanched. "Kabuto? Dr. Kabuto Yakushi from Oto Hospital?"

Seira nodded.

"Why is he here?" Sakura squeaked quietly, now suspiciously casting glances over her shoulder for the tall bespectacled doctor.

"I don't really know," Seira said apologetically, "I guess he has business here. I thought you'd know. Are there any conferences today?"

Sakura blinked. "Conferences? What? No, we don't have any until next month."

Sakura took a moment to brood. Why was Kabuto Yakushi at her hospital? Was it Halloween and she had missed it coming? That man gave her the _creeps_. He was an intelligent man and a gifted surgeon, and popular talk amongst the medical community had him and Sakura labelled as rivals.

And yeah, okay, Sakura would admit that she admired some of the man's work, and she did generally like almost always being one step ahead of him, but she didn't _want_ a rival. Plus, he _creeped_ her _out_. There was just this aura about him, when he'd stand there and push his glasses up the bridge of his nose that always made Sakura want to shiver.

An unfortunate thought struck Sakura as she sighed dejectedly. "We still haven't found a replacement for Dr. Hachiro yet, have we? She's on vacation for the next few days and we can't have the slot open. The current surgical staff are way too overworked as it is to cover her surgeries."

Seira tapped her fingernails anxiously against the counter as she pondered what Sakura had said. "Dr. Hachiro's good. Would they seriously call in Dr. Yakushi, from a different hospital, to sub for her?"

Sakura suspected they seriously would. The man would probably love the opportunity to test his skills against hers while simultaneously disturbing her, too.

Sakura wouldn't have any of it. Thrusting back her shoulders, Sakura did what any self-respecting, world-class surgeon would do when faced with this predicament.

"_Please_, Seira, I'll take anything surgery related!" Sakura begged, "There has _got_ to be something I can do that will get me off the floor so I don't have to see him when he gets up here."

Seira quickly scrambled behind her desk and riffled through the stack of file folders for non-life threatening emergency room patients. She flipped past one, frowned, and flipped back to it, sliding it out of the box and flipping it open.

"There's a Hideo Kaneko over in room thirty-seven with a knife wound to the upper arm."

Sakura snatched the file from Seira and ran her eyes over it, incredulous. Seira hadn't been lying.

"This man was supposedly stabbed, is probably bleeding profusely, and we have him in the non-life threatening box? How long has he been waiting?"

Seira tapped a finger to her chin in thought, "I don't know. Maybe an hour? Somewhere in the back of my mind I – oh!" Seira gave a little excited jump as she clasped her hands together, "I remember this file! Yeah, it's only been an hour or so. Mr. Kaneko? He's _gorgeous_."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at the excited brunette, communicating that Mr. Kaneko's attractiveness didn't tell her why the man's wound wasn't priority to be looked at. There were lots of threats from knife wounds! Was the weapon dirty? Was the wound infected? How much blood had he lost already? Could he go into shock? How much damage had the knife done? He could lose his arm!

Seira snorted and shook her head. "He's a beast, that one. He's handling it pretty well and isn't fazed by it at all. The triage nurses figured there were more pressing injuries to focus on given that he wasn't in a screaming – and I mean that literally – hurry to get it stitched." With a conspiratorial glance Sakura's way, Seira continued, "If you ask me, I'd say this isn't the first time he's been stabbed. Maybe a scorned ex-girlfriend angry because she got dumped? Let me reiterate, he's the sexy, dark, handsome, brooding type. I doubt it was the other way around."

Sakura scoffed, "I'm going to go deal with this, and then have a few words with the triage nurses. Just because the patient is acting like a hero doesn't mean they get to ignore his injury."

Great, two things she could do to occupy her time to help her avoid Kabuto. One man's shitty day is another surgeon's treasure, so they say. Or... something along those lines.

Sakura made her way through the hospital wing, heading for room thirty-seven.

Sexy, dark, handsome and brooding type? Sakura had known someone who fit that bill quite perfectly back in high school. God, that had been almost a decade ago. Feeling old, Sakura rounded a corner and headed down the hall labelled "Rooms 30-45."

She was in her late twenties, but that didn't make her _old_, the pinkette tried to defend herself. Her mom would have her head for even suggesting it. And so what if she was twenty-seven and incredibly single? She was a career driven woman with not a lot of time on her hands. It couldn't be helped. Anyway, she digressed.

In high school there had been that token male who all the girls had extreme crushes on. Sakura loathed to admit it, but she had been one of those girls who had silently admired him from afar. She'd been far too caught up in prepping for Medical School to do anything really assertive about her crush, but nevertheless she had maybe drawn a heart around his name in her notebook at some point. Possibly.

He had never been all that talkative – which made Sakura realize that most of her classmates had loved him mainly for his looks – and was incredibly talented at almost everything that he did. They had shared a mutual friend and, because of that, Sakura had always felt that she knew him more than the other girls. It was also because of that that she didn't want to blow it by being a fangirl, Sakura remembered as she found room thirty-seven.

She'd lost track of him after graduation and everyone went their own way. His name had been-

"Sasuke?"

A well-built, raven-haired man who looked disturbingly like an older version of Sasuke Uchiha was sitting, topless, on the cot in front of her, holding a bloody cloth to his arm.

The man made no move to acknowledge her presence, and she realized she was still standing in the doorway, gawking, after having said Sasuke's name out loud.

Flipping open his file with all the professional suave she could muster, she scanned for his name again.

"oh, excuse me, Mr. Kaneko, you look like someone I used to know." Sakura glanced up at him for a moment to find his onyx eyes focused on her, but still he made no move to jump up and down and inform her that he'd changed his name from Sasuke Uchiha to _Hideo Kaneko_ after one drunken night and had been too lazy to change it back. Sighing, Sakura snapped the folder shut and approached him, "but I was mistaken."

Dropping the folder off on the desk, Sakura tightened her ponytail and looked at Hideo. He lowered his hand and let her peel the cloth from his upper arm to look at the wound beneath. She sucked in a bit of air between her teeth as she eyed the bleeding gash.

"Want to tell me what happened?"

"Hn."

Sakura's eyebrow twitched as she dropped down into her chair and wheeled over to the medical drawer, taking out a suture kit and some disinfectant.

"I'm sorry if I made that sound like you had an option," She said sweetly as she rolled back towards him, having pumped her chair up to her preferred height, "but I really do need to know how this happened. The weapon could have been infected. Did you fight back and injure your attacker? The hospital can go on alert for a patient coming in with similar injuries to what you can describe for us and call the police."

The man shook his head as Sakura snapped on some rubber gloves. Sakura was prepared to wait him out. She would get at least one answer from this man before she started stitching him up or administering an anesthetic.

She raised a delicate pink eyebrow at him. "Were _you_ the attacker?"

"I was attacked," Hideo finally said in a deep voice that seemed to roll over Sakura like melted butter, "by a kitchen utensil."

Sakura resisted the urge to snort, even as she reached into a drawer beside her and took out a packaged syringe and a vial.

"Attacked by a kitchen utensil?" She repeated curiously as she removed the syringe from the plastic package. "Was anyone wielding it?"

Hideo gave her an irritated look, having obviously caught on to her disbelieving demeanour. "No one was using it. It fell from a cupboard in my house when I opened it."

Sakura stuck the tip of the needle into the vial and pulled, letting the liquid seep into the syringe.

"Bad place to keep a sharp knife," Sakura conceded as she stood to pick out a place on his arm to administer the injection. Maybe it was an irate ex-girlfriend after all. Sakura refrained from offering a little piece of advice along the lines of changing his locks as he shifted his arm away from her.

"I don't need an anesthetic."

Sakura looked back at him, down at his oozing arm, and back up at him. Oh-kay.

"You don't need to be a hero, Mr. Kaneko. Plus, this is a local anesthetic. I assure you, you won't lose any consciousness or experience lapses in judgement. This is only temporary."

As more blood dripped down his arm and he joined her in looking at his wound, he nodded, shifting his arm back within her reach.

Satisfied, Sakura injected him and pushed the syringe, letting the drug make its way into his system. Dousing a cotton ball in disinfectant, Sakura gently dabbed at his gash.

Sakura began stitching him up in silence, the only sounds in the room being that of her tools hitting her sterile tray and their steady breathing. Sakura glanced his way and found him looking at her, rather than down at his arm. A little disconcerted by the depth of his eyes and his freakish similarity to her high school crush, Sakura started up the small talk.

"You're handling your injury incredibly well," Sakura spoke as she worked the stitches through his skin.

"Hn." Sakura assumed that sound was meant to be an affirmative.

"Have you received a cut like this before?" Sakura used the word 'cut' loosely.

"Hn." She couldn't really tell what that one meant, although she suspected it meant something along the lines of none of her business. And, truth be told, as long as she wasn't concerned about the wound being self-inflicted, it really wasn't.

Finishing up her stitches and tying them off, Sakura put her utensils down on the tray and took his arm in hand, examining her work. She usually only volunteered to help with sutures whenever the surgical interns were beginning to look incredibly rundown. Normally, her hands were used for much more delicate and precise operations.

"Are you finished?" Hideo's voice brought her out of her thoughts and she released his arm, snapping off her gloves and dropping them into the trash as she slid back on her stool towards his file.

"Almost, Mr. Kaneko." Sakura confirmed as she took a pen in hand and began to scribble down some notes. "Those are dissolving stitches, so you won't have to come back and have them removed at a later date." He nodded, clearly pleased. "I can prescribe a painkiller for you and okay, judging by that look I assume you don't want one. Oh well, you can use an off the shelf one if you find the discomfort unbearable."

Sakura clicked her pen shut and closed the file, standing up and walking over to the side counter to wet a small washcloth. She dropped the cloth into Hideo's outstretched hand and nodded as he began to clean up the blood that had previously dripped down his arm.

"Stitches aren't new and healed skin though, Mr. Kaneko," Sakura felt inclined to inform the man, "so take it easy with that arm for a few weeks until the wound heals. If you jostle it, your cut can reopen and you'll be right back in here, getting reprimanded by whoever treats you."

He gave her a small nod as he slid off the cot and shrugged into a deep navy blue dress shirt. A spot on the right sleeve was torn and bloodied, but it wasn't visible to her for long as he slipped his arms into his leather jacket.

Sakura stepped out of the room, Hideo following suit.

"Just check out at the front counter and you'll be good to go. Take it easy, Mr. Kaneko."

Hideo – or who may forever be known to her as he-who-looks-like-Sasuke – nodded to her once more and made his way down the hall, towards the front desk.

Sakura watched him go as she pondered his appearance, his name, his story.

He was probably telling the truth. Probably, but then maybe not.

-o0o-

Sakura emitted a sigh of happiness as she sunk down into her soft couch, snuggling into her throw blanket and curling around her favourite cushion. She had changed into a red tank top and a comfortable pair of black shorts.

After a long, exhausting day at the hospital, filled with stitching and consultations and hiding from Kabuto, Sakura was beyond happy to be spending her evening at home. It was only eight PM, and she was planning on spending her night catching up on the news and maybe watching a re-run or two of the fairly new 'Unlucky Princess' series. It was a remake of an older movie, but whatever. The actors were great.

Stretching out on her sofa like a cat, Sakura reached her hand over the armrest and clicked a button on her telephone, activating her answering machine.

She had two new messages. The machine beeped, and the first message began.

"Forehead? Hi, it's me! Yeah, I'm not surprised you didn't answer your phone again. You're, like, never home. You need to get out more and I know, right now, you're prepared to say that I'm not making sense, but I'm telling you that working brutal shifts at the hospital doesn't count as 'getting out'. On that note," her best friend Ino Yamanaka's voice took a gleeful volume and energy increase, "Tenten and I are hitting up the clubs over in the next city sometime this week. You should come with! Maybe snag yourself a sexy man thing because seriously, you need to stop sulking over Dr. What's-His-Nuts who cheated on you with – shit, I'm blanking on her name, but whatever. He's a dirt bag and he's so not important and you can definitely do better so –"

The machine beeped as Ino ran out of message space. Sakura had her pillow in a vicious grip, stopping herself from taking out any frustration on the messenger, i.e. her answering machine. She hadn't been _sulking_. Ino was right about one thing though – Dr. Takano Masaru was so not worth sulking over. The man had cheated on her with that intern from Physical Therapy! Sakura finished her business with him shortly after she gave him a black eye.

Huffing, Sakura sank back down into the couch as the next message beeped.

"- God, these message times should be way longer. Anyway, call me and tell me that you're going clubbing with us next week. Everyone and their _dog_ knows that you deserve to spend a night out on the town. Love ya bitch, call me back!" And with a beep, Ino's loving rant ended.

Sakura sighed and tossed her cushion up into the air thoughtfully before catching it and holding it to her chest. She'd call Ino back... tomorrow. She'd never really been one for clubbing – too noisy, too warm, too jam packed with sexual tension – but if she went out with Ino and Tenten, she might be able to post-pone future nagging.

Plus, Sakura argued as she stretched her hand out to her coffee table to pick up her television remote, she wouldn't mind hanging out with the girls. It had been quite a while since she'd enjoyed any semblance of girl talk, and as much as she liked Seira, it was nice to talk to people she didn't work with. And her good friends from high school were definitely fun to be with. The only girlfriend missing would be Hinata, who was currently travelling internationally in preparation to take over her father's company.

Clicking on the TV, Sakura rolled over and read the headlines as they scrolled across the bottom of the news channel. Sakura was glad she didn't have to take over her own father's company. Her dad's business specialized in medical equipment and medicines, and was a multi-million dollar corporation. Almost all the hospitals and drug stores used their products.

Sakura had quite a bit of stock in the company and ownership rights, but she could never see herself settling down into a corporate life in order to be able to run it. Her father knew that and was proud of what Sakura did – especially since it was medically related – and simply hoped he would find someone trustworthy to follow in his footsteps.

Finding nothing particularly enrapturing on the news, Sakura began to absentmindedly flick through channels. The Unlucky Princess didn't start until nine.

Sakura halted her channel surfing as something that sounded a lot like floorboards creaking reached her ears over the low din of the television. Pausing all movement and holding in her breath, Sakura strained her ears to catch the sound once again.

Nothing.

Sakura moved to drop the remote back down on the coffee table after releasing a small nervous laugh. She was just being paranoid.

Sakura's ears picked up on the creaking sound again.

Paranoid she may be, but it's always better to err on the side of caution Sakura thought as she slowly stood up from the couch, armed with her television remote and favourite fluffy cushion.

Sakura stepped out of her living room and glanced up and down her hallway. The creaking sound seemed to be coming from down near her kitchen. Sakura began to slowly pad down the hall towards her bedroom, her heart beating rapidly.

So was being _so_ paranoid, but it was par for the course of living alone, and hell if Sakura was going to turn into one of those people that always died first in the horror movies because they got up to go investigate the 'strange noise' on their own.

Sakura approached the open doorway to her bedroom and slipped inside. She wasn't going into that kitchen without being properly armed with a bigger, blunter object than a television remote.

If she was going to end up playing wac-a-vermin all the way around her house because she'd gone and left her small dining room window open all day, she was going to do it with style.

Dropping the cushion onto her bed, Sakura walked past her open bedroom window and approached her closet. Opening the closet doors, Sakura had an arm reached in already before she realized that she definitely had closed her bedroom window before running off to the hospital at the crack of dawn.

Her heart stuck in her throat, Sakura raised her TV remote as she whipped around, a scream half-out of her lungs before a large hand was clamped down on her mouth.

Flailing, Sakura hit her attacker repetitively with her small plastic weapon before she realized her fists would be far more affective. She threw the remote at him and it bounced off his leather clad shoulder. Fisting her hands, Sakura swung, only to be spun around and held against her attacker's chest.

"Stop struggling," The man hissed into her ear and Sakura flailed more, desperately trying to get a sound out from around his hand. He caught her right fist with his other hand and hooked it around her back uncomfortably, in a hold that was designed to be extremely painful unless she stayed perfectly still.

Sakura didn't care; she was _not_ going down like this. Throwing her left elbow back, Sakura felt her arm connect with his ribcage, but his grip only faltered slightly.

With a shove, the man pushed her into her closet. Sakura felt her right arm get released and she launched herself across the tight space, slapping her hand against the small closet light she had installed.

Her small walk-in closet illuminated and Sakura gasped as she caught a glimpse of the man's face before the closet doors were shut tightly in her own.

"Stay put." The deep voice came through the door, cold and irritated.

A resounding _click_ seemed to echo in her ears as her closet lock was snapped shut.

Why did she even _have_ a lock on her closet?

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><p><strong>(AN) And so ends chapter one! I enjoyed planting a lot of seeds in this chapter. This is my first dip into writing fanfiction for this pairing and I hope it will be well-received! I'm really excited about this plot line and I hope you are too!<strong>

**OC's aren't going to be a huge big thing within this story in case anyone was worried. They're just so useful when I want to have Sakura-centric scenes! I don't know much about hospitals and medical related jargon and life beyond the first season of Grey's Anatomy, so I hope I didn't make too many blunders! (Wikipedia and I are going to be **_**super**_** tight for this story) Also, if 27 seems too young for Sakura to be as awesome as I'm saying she is, I'm using the prodigy card. **

**Please leave me a review and let me know what you think! I don't have much to bribe you all with, other than deep affection and some Sasuke POV next chapter. **

**Review please? =)**

**~dancer-me**

**Ps. Fanfiction doesn't like my use of interrobangs, so some of my emotional outbursts are lacking the outburst part =(**


	2. Crazy Situation

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter II: Crazy Situation**

**I keep forgetting to do this:**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto; that awesome person who wrote it does.**

**Thanks a bunch for all the reviews! I also want to say thanks to P i x for pointing out my inconsistent naming scheme. I would message you my thanks if I could! I will be sticking with Japanese names, and so I've switched the nurse Sarah to Seira, and the cheating Dr. David Harris to Takano Masaru. Please be informed! (I've made these changes to the first chapter) As for those who are curious about what universe this is happening in, it's essentially a modern day Narutoverse, but I warn that some North American pop culture will be mentioned and I'll be working with Western technology/housing. Thanks for reading! **

* * *

><p>Why did she even <em>have<em> a lock on her closet?

_Fucking Ino_, that's why, and her annoying tendency to borrow Sakura's shoes permanently whenever she came over to visit. Sakura had finally slipped a simple key lock around her closet door handles and cackled evilly at Ino's pout when she couldn't get the doors open.

Sakura only used the lock whenever her blond best friend was visiting, usually letting the lock hang open from one of the handles. Never in a million years had she ever considered the mechanism being used against her. While she was on that train of thought, never had she ever considered someone breaking into her house and locking her into said closet.

Backing up further into her closet and away from the doors, Sakura frantically looked around the packed space.

'_Stay put'_? She was locked in a damn _closet_. Where in God's name was she supposed to go? Narnia?

Snickering mirthlessly, Sakura dug around in her closet, just in case Lady Luck was on her side and there was some kind of hidden trap door she could slip out through that she had missed when she'd moved in.

No such luck.

Arriving back at the doors, Sakura balled up her fists and started banging mercilessly on the wood. The doors shook with the force of her blows, but still the lock did not give.

Jumping back a foot, Sakura shot out her leg and kicked the spot where the two doors came together with all the force she could muster. The doors shook once more, but the lock still remained firmly in place.

Sakura yelped and hopped around on her other leg as the force of her kick shot back up her leg. Cursing, Sakura threw all her body weight at the door, groaning as her shoulder connected with the barrier and _still_ the lock didn't budge.

"God_dammit_!" Sakura shouted angrily as she let her fists come down against the doors once more. Why wouldn't the lock break? She'd bought the stupid thing at a General Store!

Sakura didn't have many options left.

Sucking in a deep breath, she began pounding both her fists against the doors.

"Help me!" She shouted futilely as her fists came down against wood, knowing there was a slim chance any of her neighbours would hear her but still she had to try, "Somebody help!"

As she screamed and shouted, Sakura also had to consider that never had she ever been stalked by one of her patients before.

Sakura stilled her fists before they connected with the closet door again. She pondered the thought a moment as she stepped back from the doors.

Why the hell was she trying to get out of her closet? That man was out there, _in her house_, and she was not in a rush to engage in round two with him and end up suffering more than being locked into her closet.

He didn't know where she kept her key. Technically, she was safer tucked away in here while he roamed her house doing... what? Was he robbing her? Sakura grit her teeth while she dug around through her racks of clothes, aimlessly searching for she didn't know what. It wasn't as if she had much to steal – her house was surprisingly barren for being the home of a well-paid surgeon. There was nothing he could take that she didn't have the means to replace.

Sighing even while her heart still continued to beat rapidly in her chest, Sakura slid down the wall and slumped against the carpeted floor. She would wait him out. He would take what he wanted, the crazy bastard, and then she'd find a way out of her closet once she was sure he had left.

Frustrated, Sakura wrapped her arms around her curled up legs and let her forehead rest on her forearms. Who was she kidding? If that man could break into her house, he could just as easily get into her closet.

She knew who he was – she could identify him to the police. She'd seen his face; seen his medical records. He would be coming back to retrieve her from the closet after he finished his business with her house.

Why hadn't she taken her Blackberry with her when she left the couch? Groaning, Sakura knew that that was the second thing she would've screamed at the heroine in a horror movie to take with her. This could be all over in fifteen minutes if she had her phone and could call the police.

Shifting her position against the wall, Sakura tried to hope that maybe someone from the hospital would call her and be concerned when she didn't pick up. She _always_ picked up. Maybe they'd call again, get suspicious, and call the police. It was a long shot, but when trapped in a cramped closet with something uncomfortable digging into her backside, a girl could dream.

Irritated, Sakura swatted a hand behind her and grabbed at the object of her discomfort. Taking it out, she eyed the silver stiletto with a mixture of distaste and sudden euphoria. Scrambling onto her hands and knees, Sakura examined her shoe collection. It was somewhat impressive – probably the closest thing to items she collected and hardly ever got the chance to use.

The particular pair in hand was a vicious four-inch heel and she'd be lying if she said she was capable of walking in whilst appearing normal. They'd been an impulsive purchase after her breakup with Takano, and after buying them she'd promptly tossed them into her closet, bothered that she'd never wear them.

She'd contemplated gifting them to Ino; the girl had no qualms with receiving a pair of breakup shoes provided they were both stylish and gorgeous. She could also walk in heels that high.

Sakura was suddenly glad she'd tossed the pair haphazardly into her closet to be sat on later as she found the other shoe and piled them in the center of her closet, along with all the other either heavy and or pointy shoes she had in her possession.

Sakura tossed a pair of her favourite flats to the side, completely disinterested.

Ino would understand the lack of shoe gifting, Sakura told herself as she pulled out a gaudy pair of platforms she had forgotten she owned. Giving the shoe a small toss, she approved of its weight and placed it in her growing pile. Ino had always said that a woman's shoes were one of her best weapons. Sakura was going to believe in that, seeing as her options were limited.

Sitting meekly in her closet, waiting for that infuriating man to come and get her was no longer one of them.

Once she was satisfied with her stack of shoe ammo, Sakura selected the first two she would use. Gripping the silver stilettos in hand, Sakura crouched by her pile and waited.

Eventually, he would come back. At that point, she would deal with him.

Trying to hold on to her newfound confidence, Sakura took deep, even breaths and strained her ears to listen for his approach. How long had she been in here, fumbling around and banging at the doors like a lunatic?

Surely he would –

Sakura sucked in her breath and held it as she heard the sound of shoes walking across the carpet of her bedroom, the hardwood floor creaking underneath. The shoed feet stopped in front of her closet doors.

Sakura gripped her stilettos tighter, trying to ignore the sudden sweatiness of her palms.

A small metallic noise, and then the doors to her closet shook the tiniest bit and Sakura heard her lock thump down onto the carpet.

"Sa-" He'd barely had a word out as he opened the doors before Sakura whipped her fist shoe at him with a ferocious roar.

Startled, he jumped to the side as the footwear barely missed him and flew by, clanging as it bounced off her bedposts and fell to her bed.

Gathering up more shoes into her arms, Sakura flung shoe after shoe at him as he tried to move closer, his arms up in front of him to deflect the heels.

Gulping, Sakura wrapped her capable hands around her platforms and charged. He threw out an arm to grab her, but she smacked it away with her shoe, pulling her arm back and aiming for his head.

With impressive speed he spun and grabbed hold of her striking wrist, holding her in a firm grip but not tight enough to cause her pain. Struggling, Sakura dropped the shoe from her hand.

"Would you just-"

No, whatever it was he wanted she _wouldn't _because she hadn't seen him in years until today and he _broke_ into her _house_ and with a growl Sakura flung her other platform wielding arm up, smacking at his arm that held her wrist prisoner with a vengeance.

Growling himself, he jerked his other arm forward to grab at her other wrist. Panicking, Sakura thrust her knee forward and up with as much force as she could manage with her awkward footing. Grunting in pain, his grip wavered for only a moment on her captured wrist.

But a single moment was all Sakura needed and she yanked her wrist free, doing a small, clumsy pirouette beneath his raised arm as she stumbled out of the closet and ran for her bedroom door.

She would not look back, she would not look back; Sakura chanted the mantra in her head as she booked it down her hallway towards her living room. She'd grab her Blackberry, slip out her back door and run until she was sure she wasn't being followed.

She would not look back but morbid curiosity got to her as she reached the end of her hallway that led into her living room. She cast a quick glance back as she rounded the corner, panicked and fearful and justifying her check by deciding that if he was right on her tail she'd forget the Blackberry altogether and just _run_.

As Sakura turned her head to look behind her, some higher power seemed to have issues with her betraying her mantra and her foot caught on something, sending Sakura tumbling forward onto her face.

Sakura cursed as she quickly got her arms underneath her and pushed herself up off the hardwood floor and onto her hands and knees. What the hell had she tripped over? She didn't have any rugs or furniture in her ha-

"Oh holy shit!" Sakura screamed as she awkwardly lobster crawled backwards on her palms and heels with incredible speed as far away from the body as she could possibly manage.

Sakura scrambled until she could go no further, ramming her back into her living room wall behind her. Petrified, she couldn't tear her eyes off the man, dressed in a black suit, who lay slumped on the floor several feet in front of her.

_A body_. Oh, holy God, a _body_ was in her _living room_. What was a body doing in her living room?

Sakura managed to tear her eyes away from the – was it a _corpse_? – and quickly scanned her living room, unable to move any other part of her body as she mentally begged the wall to open up and swallow her whole.

_Another body _was sprawled on her small carpet that lay beneath her couch and coffee table. His upper body was awkwardly slouched up against the small table, his black tracksuit jacket unzipped and revealing a white wife-beater underneath.

Sakura gulped, jerking her horrified eyes from the body as _he_ came out of the hall. He wore the same black leather jacket over his navy blue dress shirt that he had put on when he left the hospital in the late morning.

"Y-you're crazy!" Sakura stammered as he stopped several feet away from her on the other side of the suit-clad body. He leaned against the door frame, sighed irritably, and settled his dark gaze on her.

"Would you calm down?" He said evenly, looking at her own sprawled form as she tried to press herself further into the wall. Some of her hair dangled in her face but she couldn't bring herself to care.

"Calm down? You want me to _calm down_?" She snarled up at him, trying to stand up but still finding that she had spaghetti legs.

"You're a surgeon," He told her blandly, as if that should _mean_ something to her at this point in time. When her facial expression – one of panic, disgust and horror – did not change, he added, "you should be used to seeing bodies."

Sakura all but bared her teeth at him as she braced a hand on the floor and tried to get her feet underneath her.

"Not _dead_ ones in my _house_!" Sakura sputtered as she slowly slid her back up the wall, using it for support. She didn't quite trust her legs yet to hold her steady. "I see them on operating tables and they're not usually dead when they come to me and –"

"They aren't dead."

"I save lives I don't _kill_ people in my – what?"

"They," he made a small gesture with his hand towards the men strewn across her floor, "are not dead."

Blinking, Sakura glanced down at their still bodies.

"What," she swallowed, even as she tried to subtly inch away from him, "did you do to them?"

"I knocked them out," he informed her, "which means eventually they're going to wake up. We need to be long gone before then."

"We?" Sakura squeaked and halted her snail paced getaway, forcing herself to look at him, "Sasuke I'm not going anywhere with you, you crazy bastard!"

His gaze turned hard and he pushed off the door frame, "That's why you need to come with me."

"Why? Because you're crazy?" She snapped at him, perplexed.

"No," He answered her tersely, "because you call me Sasuke."

"What?" She blinked at him, still very much confused.

"My papers say my name is Hideo Kaneko, but you still call me Sasuke." He told her as he stepped over the body, slowly approaching her as if she was a rabid animal, "You didn't believe them. You didn't believe that I was Hideo instead of Sasuke."

Noticing the distance closing between her and Sasuke, Sakura began to pick up her pace as she walked backward, away from him.

"You can be both people for all I care," she told him irritably, "it's none of my business whether you go and get your name changed in some sort of drunken haze!" Hideo had looked _too_ similar to what Sakura had envisioned an older Sasuke would look like. She'd been so sure they were one in the same, and she had been right. Unfortunately, now she had to accept that something seriously weird was going on with Sasuke.

"You're missing the point."

"The point is you broke into my house and now there are _bodies! –"_ She started to yell at him before spinning around on her heels and running down an adjacent hall towards her kitchen and her front door. She skid to a stop on the tile floor, her eyes taking in the room's disarray as pots and pans littered the floor. On the other side of her island counter, she could see a pair of black slack clad legs poking out.

She opened her mouth to shriek and Sasuke grabbed her arms and shoved her up against her kitchen doorway, slipping a leg between hers to both pin her to the wall so she wouldn't run away and to hold her steady so she wouldn't fall.

"For fucks sake, Sakura," he ground out, his use of her name snapping her attention away from the third body in her house and to Sasuke's dark eyes, mere inches from her own, "would you calm down and listen?"

Sakura sucked in a deep, wheezing breath of air, practically choking on the oxygen as it made its way through her lungs. There was no point in struggling against his hold, and so far she had yet to join the pile of unconscious bodies strewn across her house. How many more were there? What the hell was going on? Perhaps she should start with that question.

"What the hell is going on?" She whispered, her eyes wide and disoriented.

"Do you trust me?"

She didn't need to think about that one. "No!" She shouted at him, her voice dripping with disbelief that he hadn't picked up on that already. She hadn't seen the man in almost ten years, he shows up in her ER wounded and under a different name, breaks into her house, locks her in her closet and suddenly bodies appear! Oh sure, she trusted him. She may have felt differently back in high school, but obviously a lot could change over a decade of no communication.

"You're going to have to, because I need to take you with me." He informed her, clearly not too perturbed by her lack of trust in him, "these guys were after _you_."

Sakura snorted her disbelief. "Yeah right." But the fact still remained that there were unconscious bodies strewn about her house, which was an incredibly new experience for her, and one that came conveniently with Sasuke's arrival.

There was no way this had anything to do with her. Except that this was her house. And Sasuke said it did. His sanity however was still questionable, and so she tried to suppress the part of herself that was beginning to panic that he was telling the truth. "Tell me what's going on; why you're here." Sakura struggled a bit in his grip, "and while you're at it _let me _go."

He did neither, instead he looked as if he desperately wanted to heave a gigantic sigh and knock her out, too. She figured she should be exceptionally glad that he did not.

"Later," He told her as he held her steady against the wall, "we need to go."

Sakura stared him down.

"I'm not going anywhere," She tried to keep her voice even, "until you give me something to go on. Because right now you're still that crazy person who broke into my house, locked me in a closet and then decorated my home with bodies."

The 'and I'm having a hard time reverting back to our high school understanding of each other right now' was unspoken, but she suspected he heard it anyway. She also suspected that he was realizing how absolutely crazy he sounded and that her hysteria was, in her opinion, rather justified.

"I locked you in your closet," He told her, his enunciation of his words much the same way Sakura suspected one would speak to a slow child – she tried not to let this irk her, considering he was finally telling her _something_, "so I could deal with _them_."

So okay, that sounded like a reasonable explanation for locking her away. She had definitely been safe from those men when in her closet. His crazy meter was slowly depleting. Still, she had a thousand questions she wanted to ask him, but she needed to pick them wisely. Not the least of which was why had he even known the ambiguous _them _would be at her house? How had he known where she lived? How _had_ he managed to knock all three of them out? Why had he even bothered?

"Who's them?" She inquired, and at his raised – did you forget about the bodies in your kitchen and living room? – eyebrow, she elucidated, "Yeah, _them_, but who _are_ they?"

"Bad people," Yes, he was definitely talking to her as if she was a child, "who want something from you."

"Why me?"

"Because you called me Sasuke," He reminded her somewhat impatiently, "back in the hospital when you saw me."

The whole thing sounded absurd, but still she felt the colour begin to slowly drain from her face as that part of herself that was panicking broke through her inner defences. She definitely had called him Sasuke, and apparently he really _had_ heard her. And now suddenly there were bad people in her house who supposedly wanted something from her.

"Why would that matter?" She whispered, trying to hide the sudden anxiety that was resurfacing in her voice, "and what do they want?"

He looked frustrated, but she was feeling cold and clammy and altogether _ill_ and she didn't care because she was blaming this all on _him_.

"Because that's the name of a man they'd like to know more about," he explained to her, and it struck her that the only reason he was probably telling her any of this at all was because _he_ was in a rush to leave, "and he's been difficult to find. You found him for them."

Sakura stared at him, wide-eyed, her pallor increasing. Someone had been _that_ close to her in the hospital to overhear her say his name, just that once? And somehow Sasuke had known. Suddenly Sakura found herself feeling incredibly glad Sasuke had broken into her house to protect her.

"Who _are_ you?" She breathed out shakily. Was he some kind of undercover cop?

"Look, we can talk about this later," he told her, "We need to go. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Well why didn't you tell me that earlier?" Sakura tried to make light of the situation; tried to cover up her sudden onslaught of fear. Because Sasuke _hadn't_ tried to hurt her at all so far. Everything he'd done was in self-defence. If he was telling her the truth, which she was well on her way to worrying he was, she had somehow landed herself deep in something she couldn't get herself out of. It would mean that these men really _had_ come here for her.

"You were busy trying to maim me with your shoes." He replied, deadpan.

Right. She was going to let that topic drop right there.

"Can't we just call the police? Why do we need to go?" She asked him then, hopefully prompting him to reveal that he _was_ the police to her and that all would be well and yeah, wishful thinking.

He shook his head at her as he slowly released his grip on her arms and took a step away from her, seeming to have decided that she wasn't going to try to run away again. He walked into her kitchen, stepping around to the other side of her island counter. She stared dumbly at him for a moment before she realized that she was supposed to follow.

Slowly and on shaky legs she walked until she stood beside him, looking down at the clean shaven man, maybe in his mid-thirties, who lay sprawled on the tile. Sasuke knelt down beside him and slipped his hand into the man's inner jacket pocket, pulling out a thick and somewhat long black wallet.

He flipped it open, and Sakura stared, dumbfounded, at the police badge and photo. Officer Asahara Izumo of the Konoha Police Force was unconscious on her kitchen floor.

"I don't know who I should trust," Sakura admitted when she could finally manage to form words. A police officer knocked out on her floor, or her old high school crush who had broken into her house and only supplied her with vague answers? Who had apparently saved her from what could have likely been a very nasty situation? She also had to take into consideration the existence of the _other_ two bodies.

"Standard procedure for an officer is to announce his presence before entering a private home," Sasuke told her as he slipped the wallet back into the man's pocket and stood up, "If he was here doing his job you would have heard him."

Sakura shook her head. "I was banging around in my closet, screaming... I couldn't hear anything."

Sasuke shot her a look, "You would have if he had wanted you to."

Still, Sakura desperately wanted to believe that people in the Konoha _Police Force_ weren't crooked. Weren't trying to – to what? She didn't know what these men wanted with her. And then Sasuke dropped the next bomb that she knew she couldn't logic her way out of.

"If he was on duty he'd be in his uniform."

Sakura knew that was true. She knew all of her neighbours, and none of them were policemen. None would have heard her screaming and come over so quickly to find out what was going on. Sasuke was so bent on leaving because getting the police involved was unreliable.

"So you're telling me," she conjectured, since Sasuke obviously believed he had made his point, "that if I called the police, this could get worse. Or... I call the police, they show up, deal with this and –"

"And someone tries to grab you another day, in another place." Sasuke finished for her.

He was completely serious, and Sakura couldn't shake the cold chill in her bones. Why was this happening to her? What made Sasuke so important that her saying his stupid name at the hospital warranted all of this? It was so goddamned un_fair_.

"Just tell me one thing," she asked him then as she tried to get a hold of herself. "Should I trust you? This is..." She gestured at him, at her, at the officer lying in the middle of her kitchen, "unreal. I need to know that you haven't turned into some crazy criminal and this isn't just one huge, elaborate set-up to kidnap me." Not that he would tell her if he or it was, but stupidly Sakura knew that if he told her she could trust him, she would believe him.

Stupidly, he was morphing from crazy housebreaker into Sasuke Uchiha, man whom she had known since she was twelve. Man whom she would have readily trusted nine years ago. Man who had just saved her from only _he _knew what would've happened. She'd have to get it out of him later.

"Yes," He told her, looking her straight in the eye, "you should trust me. Now go. Pack a bag. We need to leave."

And she believed him. She would try to trust him because all of this was _far_ too big and confusing for her to try to make sense of on her own. Sakura turned to finally do as she was told, but stopped in her tracks.

"Leave to _where_?" She asked him then, aware that he kept mentioning leaving her house but never told her anything more than that. He gave her an irritated look, and she could tell he was obviously fed up with all her pestering for answers. She stood her ground. "Look, I have a job. I'm a _surgeon_. I can't just up and disappear!"

"You're going to _have_ to," He told her point-blank, "Because this," he gestured at the unconscious policeman, "is serious."

No shit. Her normal life was being turned more and more upside down with every second that passed in his presence.

"For how long?" She asked yet another question. These were things she needed to know, and despite everything that had already transpired, everything he had told her, Sakura still felt as if she knew nothing.

When she looked into his onyx eyes, they were looking back at her, and the small part of her that still had her shit together was bemoaning the fact that this whole fiasco was likely the most attention he had ever paid to her. And it was chock full of annoyance on both their parts.

"Do you _really_ want to be here when they wake up?" He shot back at her, his voice low and his eyebrow up.

No, she really didn't. But she was still infuriated that he wouldn't answer her questions! What was she supposed to do, concoct some incredible excuse to give the hospital that would cover her indefinite absence?

Staring back at him, Sakura got the feeling that that was exactly what he expected her to do. Harrumphing, Sakura turned on her heels and practically stomped out of her kitchen. She would let the Uchiha have his way, if only because he was the one with all the answers that she required. But once they left? She would _grill_ him mercilessly.

Because _this?_ In the long run? This was all his fault. Whatever he'd gone and gotten himself into, he'd sucked her in now too, and she had no choice but to trust and go with him if she didn't want to end up reliving this night without someone to conveniently rescue her. In fact, with the way he was acting, she doubted that she really had a choice in the matter. If she said no, he'd probably just knock her out and take her anyway.

Stepping into her room, she jumped a bit at all the footwear strewn about her floor and furniture before she remembered pelting them at Sasuke back when she'd been wholeheartedly convinced that he had lost his mind. Never in her wildest imagination would she have imagined this turn of events.

Stepping over a pair of purple pumps, Sakura reached into the top shelf of her closet and pulled out a duffel bag. Kicking aside some more shoes, Sakura went deeper into her closet and selected a collection of shirts, a few pairs of jeans, other articles of clothing she felt she may require, scooped up her discarded favourite pair of flats, and after some thought slipped on a black zip-up hoodie.

Stepping out of her closet, Sakura walked into her adjoining bathroom and dropped her toiletries into her pack. She caught a look at herself in her mirror and stopped short.

She looked dishevelled and scared. Her hair was a mess as it hung down around her shoulders, mussed and in knots. She placed her bag down on the floor and tried to work out the tangled mess with her fingers. She was pale; paler than normal.

This whole situation had completely blindsided her and apparently her system still wasn't handling it too well. Taking in a deep breath and being as satisfied with her hair as she really could be given the circumstances, Sakura picked up her bag and left the room.

Stepping across the hall, Sakura entered her home office. She placed a couple personal items into her duffel bag and leaned over her keyboard, activating her desktop computer and waiting patiently as the operating system started up.

Clicking open an email, Sakura blasted off an email to the head of her hospital, explaining – in a very convincing way, she was sure – that she had a family emergency and would need to be taking all the vacation time she had piled up over the years in order to see to it. She apologized for the abruptness, hoped she wasn't causing too much disruption, and told him that she wasn't sure when she'd be back. Sincerely, a severely frazzled surgeon.

Backspacing, Sakura typed her name and attached her email signature and clicked send. The Head would understand, especially given the importance her family members had to the medical community. She felt a small amount of guilt over using her family and their relation to their thriving enterprise as an excuse, but then she figured that the truth wouldn't really sit well with anyone.

It still wasn't sitting all that well with her.

Looping the strap of her bag over her shoulder, Sakura shut off her computer, turned off the light and headed back to her living room.

Hesitantly stepping (read: jumping) over the suited body – she had to convince herself that he wasn't going to come to and latch onto her ankle but one could never be sure – Sakura took the long way around to the other side of her coffee table and scooped up a couple postcards that were fanned across the surface.

If she was taking a surprise vacation, she might as well catch up on her mail. Slipping the cards into her sack, Sakura reached down, shut-off her Blackberry and dropped the phone in, too. She knew she wouldn't be able to use it, and that it would be receiving a lot of calls she wouldn't be able to answer, but it held a lot of her personal information and she didn't want any of these – Hit men? Thugs? – going through it after they woke up.

Sakura left the living room and headed down the hall to her kitchen, finding Sasuke standing in the doorway, waiting for her.

Sakura suddenly felt herself feeling incredibly self-conscious as he scrutinized her, taking in her appearance – she probably should have slipped a pair of sweats on over her shorts – and her single, albeit somewhat large bag.

"Ready?"

Sakura nodded. She was as ready as she'd ever be for this absolutely crazy situation.

He nodded back at her and then promptly invaded her personal space. Startled, Sakura made to jump back but his hand had already curled around the fabric of her hood. He pulled the cloth up and over her head, and Sakura realized what he was doing.

"Follow me." He told her curtly, and then he led her to the backdoor and they slipped out into the night.

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><p><strong>(AN) I had WAY too much fun writing the closet scene. On that note, the Sasuke and Sakura dialogue was ridiculously difficult, as I ended up needing to convince <strong>_**myself**_** that he wasn't some lunatic housebreaker. Hopefully Sakura's shift from thinking he was crazy to placing her trust in him seems believable. :S [the whole scene seemed so much easier in my outline] **

**He also talked way more than I had planned, but I'm justifying it by his great desire to grab her and GTFO (which she wasn't making easy unless he spilled some beans. Hey, I'd want some answers!). We'll find out more about Sasuke's deal and why he did what he did in the chapters to come! **

**And yes, I am aware that I jumped the gun on the whole Sasuke POV in this chapter. Sorry about that. Next one for sure! (chapter 3 will be predominantly his) I had to extend the final scene of this chapter to be satisfied with it and it left no room for the Uchiha. =(**

**Review please! They are my f**_**uuuuuue**_**l! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter!**

**~dancer-me**


	3. Just His Day

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter III: Just His Day**

**(AN) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

**Thanks so much for the reviews! I LOVE them and appreciate them so much! ^_^ I gonna have CAKE and I'm HAPPY (more on that later) This one is a little shorter than the rest, but I wanted to get it out today. Happy Canada Day! **

* * *

><p>Sakura sat in the passenger seat of Sasuke's car, awkwardly twitching as she stared out the window and into the night as the soft glow of street lamps whipped by.<p>

They'd been driving for half an hour in relative silence, Sakura having a hard time escaping her rambling thoughts long enough to form coherent sentences. Every now and then she cast a quick glance at Sasuke as he drove, both hands on the steering wheel and his gaze fixed ahead of him.

He had yet to volunteer to fill her in on what exactly was going on, and she was quickly losing her patience. She desperately wanted to know what was happening, where they were going, and who Sasuke had become.

Because seriously? He'd cleverly found a way to avoid answering her 'who _are _you?' question back in her house, and though she may have been okay with that at the time, sooner or later he was going to have to fill her in.

Her problem, it seemed, when it came to the information gathering game – she preferred to think of it as a game, rather than the totally hysteria inducing situation it truly was – was that the man was too tight lipped. Whenever she tried to covertly look his way, he seemed stoic and focused on... something that was definitely not her.

It was becoming more and more apparent to her that the only reason he'd had the courtesy to tell her anything was because he'd wanted her to leave her house with him. If she hadn't gone willingly, this whole predicament would be akin to kidnapping. In fact, in her eyes, it still sort of was. He'd shown up in her house and, with her personal safety in mind, she'd had no other choice but to go with him.

She'd have to be subtle, she surmised, and coax the information out of him. Trick him into slipping up and telling her something that would give her something, _anything_ to go on to try to piece the puzzle of this night together.

"So..." she started brilliantly, her voice shattering the silence in the car, "what have you been up to lately?" Okay, so that was lame. Interrogation had never been one of her strong points.

He said nothing, merely tilting his head for a fraction of a second to shoot a sideways glance her way before focusing back on the road. Already this wasn't off to a great start. Refusing to be discouraged, she tried again.

"Let me rephrase. What did you do after high school?"

When he still said nothing, Sakura gave an annoyed huff and crossed her arms in front of her as she leaned back into the leather seat.

"Look, you have to tell me something, and since you're not filling me in on what's currently going on – which is unfair, by the way, because it involves me now – you could at least tell me what you were up to _in the past_." She shifted in her seat, turning to look directly at him as he drove, "Since we haven't seen each other in what? Nine years? There's a lot of history to catch up on don't you think?"

Oh God, she was rambling. But now that she'd started she just couldn't stop.

"Especially since we're stuck with each other for an indefinite amount of time because of only you know what since you're doing a great job leaving me in the dark. Here, I'll start; after high school I went to Med School, got my M.D when I was twenty-three – I overloaded on courses so I could finish early – did a year interning at Konoha General, got hired on full-time the next year and I've been working there as a surgeon ever since. Sasuke? You can't just kidnap me and then tell me nothing about why this is happening!"

Sakura finally got a hold of her voice and clamped her mouth shut, halting her rambling. When she still got no sign from Sasuke that he was paying any attention to her at all, she began to wonder if he was even listening.

Her temper resurfacing, Sakura sucked in a deep breath.

"I also have a lucrative side-business wherein I steal drugs from the hospital and sell them on the black market. I make a ton of money which I use to feed my shoe addiction, and it's come to my attention that those thugs you dealt with in my house may have nothing to do with you and everything to do with my moonlighting as a drug dealer –"

Ah, so he _was_ listening. Sakura couldn't help but smirk triumphantly as Sasuke shot her another glance, looking at her longer this time, his brow shaping his expression into something she was choosing to interpret as some semblance of alarm. The expression disappeared almost as quickly as it had come as Sasuke looked up into his rear view mirror and focused his eyes back on the road once more.

Still, Sakura was amused by the thought of him actually taking a moment to consider that her house break in had had absolutely nothing to do with him and her having said his name in the hospital but rather her own business, entirely. Wouldn't _that_ make this whole situation deliciously ironic?

Hah-hah, ha – yeah, she really was desperate to find a way to distract herself from being terrified over what was happening to her and her life.

"I went to college."

Sakura snapped out of her mental 'let's find something to laugh about' party and focused on Sasuke, who had finally said something to her since they left her house in a hurry.

"What did you study?" She asked him after a few minutes of silence rolled past and she figured he wasn't going to elucidate without some prompting.

"Criminal justice."

Sakura nodded and shifted back in her seat to stare at the road ahead. The world wasn't ironic enough to have him study that and turn into a criminal mastermind... right?

"So... are you a cop now?" Might as well test her previous theory. The unconscious cop on her kitchen floor was a moot point.

"No." He shot her a glance that clearly told her that a criminal justice degree did not directly equal the police academy – which she knew – but still, she was grasping at leads in the dark and she had to start _somewhere_. At least she had him talking to her now.

"Detective?"

"No."

"Military?"

"No."

"Government?"

"No."

"If those guys in my house were bad and dangerous, why didn't you kill them?"

-o0o-

Jesus.

Sasuke glanced up into his rear view mirror again, making sure they weren't being followed. Satisfied with the lack of headlights behind him, he focused his eyes back on the road.

Today was just his fucking day, wasn't it?

He wanted to drive in silence; to give himself some time to think but no, she had to go and be annoying. He'd be harsher with her, as he was wont to do with people who irritated him, but since he technically _did_ do something akin to kidnapping, he was trying to let it slide.

And since the woman would not stop talking now that she'd started, he offered up answers because when he spoke, she shut up.

He deliberately refrained from looking at her as he decided how he would go about answering her question. He doubted she'd appreciate a saucy retort involving his concern for the condition of her very nice hardwood floors and the money it would cost her to remove the bloodstains. He also could slip something in there about not having wanted to make her house into a crime scene.

But she'd know he was being evasive if he went that route because fuck if he didn't run into the one person in Konoha who knew enough about him from his younger years to be able to pick up on that. To be able to recognize him nine years down the line after zero contact.

Fuck. Just... fuck. It had to be Sakura Haruno, because this whole situation just wasn't a big enough mess without her.

His peripheral vision was incredibly honed, and he was doing a far better job when it came to subtly keeping an eye on her than she was on him. She was staring out the windshield, trying to make it look as if she was patiently waiting for his reply instead of constantly slanting him glances and probably brewing up her next ingenious strategy to get him to talk. Her hands were fiddling in her lap, and every few minutes or so she lifted a hand to push a lock of pink hair behind her ear. Probably a nervous gesture.

If it had been anyone but her who came to stitch him up, this day would have only been a mere blip in his plans. Instead, when he'd heard a woman approach his door and say his name in surprise, he'd resisted the urge to cringe and run. When he'd caught sight of pink hair, his blood pressure had been subjected to a miniscule increase.

When she'd called him Mr. Kaneko and stitched him up with a little small talk about his kitchen utensil story, he'd ventured a hope that the day was still salvageable.

By the time he'd checked out of the hospital he knew – if the way his day had already gone was any proof at all – that things wouldn't be that easy. Even though there'd been no one nearby when Sakura had led him out of his room, and even though his cursory check of the wing before he approached the check-out desk had revealed no suspicious faces, that didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

And in Sasuke's particular world, the grand scheme of things was where one operated.

He could have just left. She didn't know anything, and therefore didn't pose a threat to him. Except if anyone had traced him back to Konoha General Hospital and had been within earshot of his room, _they_ would be under the impression that the pink-haired surgeon knew Sasuke Uchiha. Except there were too many other reasons why he couldn't simply leave her to fend for herself and get grabbed. For one, Naruto would be pretty fucking pissed if anything happened to Sakura because of him. Not that Sasuke particularly cared about the idiot's feelings, but it _was_ something that had been taken into consideration.

And so he'd sat in his car and waited. And while he waited he allowed himself to brood. If he'd had a canister of disinfectant, this wouldn't have happened. If he'd been able to stitch himself up, Sakura Haruno wouldn't have been his surgeon. If Sakura Haruno hadn't have been his surgeon, he could've just walked away, sutured and ready to continue with his day a little more cautiously than he previously had been.

But he was in Konoha, his hometown, and he should have known that things would find a way to get more complicated. The potential to be recognized here was tenfold. His mistake had been in thinking there'd be no one in the hospital that knew him. When some higher power had decided to make Sakura Haruno his surgeon for shits and giggles he, admittedly, had been caught off guard.

He'd watched her face as she concentrated on stitching his arm, trying to drag up in his memory what he knew about her. In high school she'd been... popular, in a student council nerd sort of way. When she wasn't at some club meeting she'd be in the hall, surrounded by overly noisy females or Naruto – he was tempted not to differentiate between the two sometimes – or in the library, studying and –

Well, fuck him. Studying for medical school. He had, at some point, been aware of that. Unfortunately, he'd logged _that_ away in the dark recesses of his mind labelled useless information and moved on. Nine years later, that didn't seem to be the case.

He'd followed Sakura home after her shift ended – the brunette at the front desk had been extremely helpful – and parked several blocks away. He'd exited his car and kept to the shadows, keeping a watch on her house. If nothing happened, he was prepared to count them both lucky and move on with his life. But since his day had already been turning out to be a spectacularly shitty one, he noticed a dark figure approaching the front of her house.

He easily scaled the wall of her house to a window, jimmied it open and slipped inside. Not wanting to attract any unwanted attention by causing unnecessary noise, he had opted to leave the window open. He'd barely moved from his crouched position by her dresser before she'd tip-toed into her room, wielding a cushion and TV remote as if they would actually be effective in some sort of combat.

From her spooked demeanour, he had gathered that her house had already been breached.

Getting her into her closet had been more difficult than anticipated, but still pathetically easy. A small favour had been the lock hanging off the door handle – the way things had been going, he hadn't expected her to follow his instructions and stay put.

The only target that had posed much of a challenge to him was the police officer in the kitchen. Since Sasuke had been deliberately trying to avoid killing him, they'd crashed around for a bit, knocking over kitchenware before Sasuke had managed to incapacitate him.

Before heading back to Sakura, Sasuke had taken a quick moment to look over the unconscious men – see if they had anything of interest on their persons. The Officer and the Suit both had identification on them – clear signs that they were new. Sasuke had pocketed an item from the Suit and moved over to the Track Suit, who was void of any ID or hints. Completely barren, but a shit fighter in hand-to-hand combat. Leaving the jacket unzipped, Sasuke went back down the hall to let Sakura out of her closet and obtain her cooperation.

He didn't _need_ it, but it made things simpler, and he wasn't in the business of over-complicating things for himself. It seemed like the more prudent thing to do given that they had been... acquaintances. Such connections didn't really matter to him, but it would prove to be useful in this particular situation.

He hadn't expected immediate and full cooperation, but more than that he hadn't expected to end up dodging fancy footwear. Fuck, he'd been in fist fights, knife fights, firefights, even razor fights but... shoes? That one was a novelty he didn't particularly appreciate. A surprisingly uncomfortable one, as well; he'd made a mental note to be aware of that in the future.

Getting her to calm down and listen had been an exercise in patience and one he was hoping to never have to revisit. He hadn't pegged her as the hysterical type but, to be fair, her description of the situation seemed to warrant it... somewhat.

He'd taken it upon himself to peruse her house while she'd packed – after having _finally_ stopped asking so many fucking questions – and took note of a few things he would have to deal with later.

He had a lot of things to think about – the issue at hand and his annoying pink cargo – and was content to stay within his mind before she'd finally snapped and started up again with the fucking questions.

And on that note, wasn't he supposed to be coming up with an answer to her most recent one? Why didn't he kill the bad – his word, so he couldn't really insult her for it – and dangerous men in her house.

Why? Because that wasn't how it worked in the Game. Killing them would mean bodies to dispose of. If he left them in her house and disappeared, it would raise too many questions and, truthful to his earlier thought, create a crime scene. These things were unnecessary. They would wake up, gather themselves together, and disappear.

"Did you want me to kill them?" He asked her instead of giving her a real answer. He shifted his head to look at her as he finished. She looked taken aback.

"What? I'm not bloodthirsty like that!" She snapped at him, her fingers ceasing their fidgeting, "I just wanted to know why, if they're so dangerous, you didn't...didn't..." she flapped her hand around, as if she were trying to stir up a thought cloud. "_deal_ with them, I guess is the word I'm going for."

He had dealt with them. He had done and taken everything he needed before moving on.

"Hn."

She glared at him, "I'm kind of new to this whole thing," no shit. "but once they wake up can't they just... resume looking for me?"

"Yes," He told her, and she seemed a bit perturbed by his blunt honesty. Glancing at her, he explained, "and that is why we needed to leave. You'll be difficult to find this way."

There was a significantly large portion of him that was hoping that they would lose interest in her as a lead. They would dig around her house when they regained consciousness, see no signs of communication between the two – except maybe yearbook photos, and that would serve to justify her knowing him but still show that she knew nothing else of him – and move on.

That way, he could part ways with her in the near future with no promises of keeping in touch.

Except he'd brooded, broken into her house, knocked them out and kidnapped her so they wouldn't. His actions could be interpreted as a sign that she somehow mattered to him, and therefore he'd essentially painted an even more prominent target on her back.

But fuck if he'd had much of a choice.

There was still a chance that if she stayed under the radar long enough, they'd give up on her and move on. As would he, and she could go back to working at the hospital. He couldn't bank on that, however, on the off chance that she _did _know something relevant.

So he was stuck with her for – was she still talking?

"- dead people in my house would've sucked, anyway." She ended her probably long-winded story with a nervous laugh and a small shrug.

"Where are we going?"

"Hn." He needed to figure that out. Which he would, if she stopped talking.

"How did you know they'd be at my house?"

"I didn't."

Sakura snorted and stared at him, "so what, you just broke in and waited on a _hunch_?"

He spared her a glance – the snort warranted it – before focusing back on the road. "It was an educated guess."

Sakura was silent for a minute, looking out the window as the last of the city lights passed by and they drove out on a highway surrounded by forestry.

"You changed your name."

"Hn." She was obviously expecting some kind of explanation for that, but since she'd said it as a statement, he merely acknowledged it as one. The information was irrelevant to her involvement. In fact, much of this had absolutely nothing to do with her and he was looking forward to dumping her somewhere safe and moving on. The less she knew the better.

With that thought in mind he focused his attention on navigating his vehicle down the highway. Where he figured he'd end up taking her was still a day's drive away. They needed to find some place to put up for the night and wouldn't _that_ just be an experience he could live without.

Especially since she had so many goddamned questions.

He glanced over at her, noticing that her fidgeting gestures had changed. She was sitting angled in her seat, her torso turned towards him and her palms resting on her exposed thighs. She gently rubbed her hands on her skin and Sasuke determined that her legs were probably cold. He wasn't surprised, given the shorts she was wearing on a cool night.

Perhaps her incessant need to talk stemmed from her chilliness. Figuring he was feeling somewhat cool himself, Sasuke took one hand off the wheel and switched on the heat in the car. Her let himself gauge her reaction through his peripheral vision and noted she had stopped talking.

That was a nice improvement.

"You're infuriating!" She snapped at him as he leaned back in his seat, both hands back on the wheel.

What? What the fuck did he do now?

"What?" He asked her, mild confusion laced heavily with irritation evident in his voice.

"Hn."

"What?"

"That's what you said! You hn'd me again!"

He had? Heh.

She threw her hands up in the air, exasperated. "I say hey, Sasuke, I figure you've been ignoring me for the past fifteen minutes, but have you noticed that your arm is bleeding?" She huffed, glared pointedly at him, and then snapped, "and then you say HN!"

Fuck. His arm was bleeding again? Shifting his gaze down to his arm, he noted that the arm of his jacket had become damp and somewhat crimson since he had last washed the blood out of it. And now he was going to bleed all over his car.

Fan-fucking-tastic day.

"Nice stitching job." He offered her sarcastically.

"Oh fuck you," She snarled at him, crossing her arms beneath her chest, "I told you not to jostle it or else the stitches would come out! And then you nodded," She made an exaggerated nodding motion that he could pick up through his peripheral vision without even trying, "and then you went and attacked three men in my house! _That_ is more than _jostling_. So this isn't my problem!"

Huffing, she leaned back into her seat for a millisecond before heaving a frustrated sigh. "Except now it is my problem because I need to stitch that back up before you bleed everywhere or fall asleep at the wheel from blood loss."

He'd forgotten about her temper. The shoe thing ought to have reminded him.

"We can't go back to the hospital." He told her point-blank. That would be a step in the wrong direction. He'd find a way to deal with the bleeding later when he was satisfied with the distance he'd put between them and Konoha.

"Obviously," Sakura said, sounding irritated that he'd even suggest she was thinking that, "I stitched you up the first time, Sasuke. I can do it again. We just need to stop somewhere I can do it."

"Not in the car," She added, almost as if she'd picked up on his 'just do it now, then' vibes.

He caught a glimpse of a road sign as he sped down the highway. In a dozen more miles they'd come across a small town. It wasn't the last one they'd hit before reaching his destination, but it was the most inconspicuous and it would have a decent motel.

"How?" He asked her then, remembering his own lack of a medical kit.

"I always keep a well stocked medical kit in my bag in case of emergencies," she shrugged as she answered.

He normally did, too. But apparently he'd encountered one too many emergencies and failed to restock.

"We'll hit a town soon," he told her, "we'll get a motel room for the night and you can stitch me up there."

Sakura scrunched up her nose. Maybe she had an issue with motels.

"'A' motel room. As in one?" Or she liked her personal space. Which, unfortunately for both of them, he wasn't going to be able to give her a lot of if he wanted to play this safe.

"One. I need to know where you are at all times."

"But you won't tell me why."

"I told you why." He answered impatiently. Her questions were irritating him again.

"Because bad people want to ask me questions about you."

"Hn."

"Why?"

That was information she didn't need to know. Why couldn't she just make his life simple and _see_ that?

He pulled into the parking lot of the closest motel, the somewhat lopsided neon sign advertising the establishment glaringly blinking against the darkness of the night. Most of the letters were lit up.

As they stepped out of his car and he removed her duffel bag from the back seat, he heard her suck in a breath and scoff.

What was it _now_?

Turning, he saw her standing next to her open car door, arms akimbo as she read the sign that wasn't lit up but made of white letters on a black background that was propped outside the front door.

"Hourly rates? Seriously?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her as he shouldered her bag and locked up after she pushed her door shut. He headed for the front door and after a few moments she scurried to catch up with him.

"That's just so... _sleazy_." She complained as she followed him inside.

Really? It seemed rather efficient to him.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN) What? Did I just give you Sasuke POV and tell you next to nothing about what is going on? BWAHAHA. *hides* And the plot... didn't really thicken. In fact, it kind of back-tracked; I dropped a bone but it is, alas, a tiny one. On the other hand, now you know what he was doing at &amp; in her house! I am having lots of fun writing this, as you may be able to tell. Sasuke and Sakura, however... they are not off to a good start. <strong>

**Right. Personal side-story! I've been reading a romance novel wherein the main female character makes wedding cakes and the author is **_**so**_** gloriously descriptive that I've been craving cake. All week. It is seriously all I want. One of my good friends bribed me to go downtown with him to Parliament Hill to celebrate Canada Day by saying he'll take me to a bakery and I get CAKE. And since cake makes me happy, I updated. **

**You know what else makes me happy? REVIEWS! So, so happy. ^_^ so if you're going to take a moment to set an alert for my story:**

**Please review! **

**~dancer-me**

**Ps. Sasuke has a potty mouth –mind? – because I said so. =D**

**PPs. ROYAL COUPLE KINDA EXCITED *fangirl squeal* I'm off to go celebrate downtown! **


	4. Give Me Some Credit

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter IV: Give Me Some Credit**

**(AN) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto**

**Three chapters in and this story is already on people's favourites list? ! =O That makes me ridiculously giddy. I hope where I'm taking this story continues to interest all of you and that I meet your expectations and hopes! **

**Thank you for all the kind reviews so far! Reading them puts a huge smile on my face and continues to inspire me to write this story! (and why thank you, I did enjoy my cake. Very much!)**

* * *

><p>A part of her suspected that he'd selected this particular motel on an impulse that its shady exterior would cause her to forget she had asked him a question he had yet to answer.<p>

That part of her was incredibly pissed off at the moment because it had worked.

Why? Who are you? He kept finding ways to not tell her. That couldn't mean anything good, could it?

Sakura stalked into their shared motel room after Sasuke, her eyes scanning the room. She had to admit, for all the sketchy vibes the motel's exterior emanated, the interior wasn't too bad. Well, the shabby throw rug at the end of the bed looked as if it could've done with being replaced a couple decades ago, but the bed itself looked comfortable enough and the wallpaper wasn't peeling off the walls in the way she had imagined.

The blankets were a generic shade of blue and looked clean, and the pillows were a tad overstuffed, but hey, this was a pay by the hour established. She doubted too many people actually made use of the cushions.

_God_, wasn't that a thought.

Sakura cast Sasuke a sideways glance as he dumped her duffel bag on the end of the bed. He took a quick walk around the room, opening up the bathroom door and glancing around before stepping back out.

His actions made her feel stuck somewhere between disturbed and relieved. She knew for sure that he wasn't poking around to make sure the bathroom was stocked up on toilet paper. More like checking to make sure there wasn't anyone hiding _with_ the toilet paper.

What kind of life was he leading that he actually felt compelled to check the washroom of a motel room he'd picked at random? She desperately wanted to know, and at the same time she was experiencing a significant amount of anxiety over what she was going to do if she didn't like or couldn't handle his answer.

Snorting inwardly, Sakura walked over to the bed and began to rummage through her bag. At the rate things were going, she wouldn't have to worry about not liking his answer on account of the fact that he was never going to give her one.

She tugged a pair of dark grey sweatpants out of her bag and dropped them on the bed beside her with more force than was necessary.

She needed to know _something _about what was going on. It had been hours since those men broke into her house and she was still just as clueless as she'd been back then when she'd left with Sasuke.

As Sakura dug her arm down further into her bag and swished her hand around, looking for her medical kit way at the bottom, she had to concede that maybe she had gained a little bit of information. He wasn't a police officer, and he'd said no to being a detective, in the military, or working for the government.

That narrowed it down somewhat, but in a way that wasn't too reassuring. Did these people want information on him because he was involved in something illegal? Black market, perhaps? Maybe _that's_ why he'd been paying attention to her when she started jabbering on about her fictional lucrative side-business.

What did he deal in then? Human trafficking? Sakura gulped as she wrapped her hand around the handle of her canvas medical kit and pulled. If that was the case she certainly hadn't made him work too hard for his latest victim.

She dumped the kit on the bed, closed her bag and scooped up her sweatpants. She was being stupid. He could have just as easily lied about being any of the things she had asked about in order to maintain his cover or... whatever people who are deep in something have in order to protect their real identity. The only thing Sasuke was, to her knowledge, was shady. Or mysterious and secretive, since she'd already dubbed the motel shady and the two were definitely not equivalent when it came to exteriors.

She felt a slight tinge of heat creep up into her cheeks at the thought and speed walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her without checking to see if Sasuke had noticed her blush. Immediately she regretted her hasty retreat. What? Was she sixteen again and ogling?

He was a good looking man. Very good looking, and still in possession of that 'I'm totally unaware of how sexy I really am' demeanour that he'd carried around throughout high school. She was a grown woman; there was nothing wrong with her appreciating his looks. People were allowed to admire art, weren't they? Especially, she argued, when it's so suddenly and unexpectedly thrust upon them after a long time going without.

Sucking in a deep breath of air – which was unfortunate, given that the bathroom _did_ smell faintly of mold, Sakura peeled off her shorts and stepped into her sweatpants, sighing as the warmth began to work its magic on her frozen shins.

After going about her business, Sakura combed her fingers through her hair and, slipping a hair elastic off her wrist, tied the long pink locks up in a ponytail.

She washed her hands a second time and, using a paper towel, wrapped it around the door handle and opened it. Sakura tossed the towel in the trash as she approached Sasuke. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, having already taken off his jacket and his shirt and was poking at the gash in his upper right arm.

She, Sakura Haruno, was sharing a motel room with Sasuke Uchiha. Her inner sixteen year old would be squealing were it not for the fact that this was one of the least romantic situations, ever. Yeah, he was topless on a bed they had yet to fight over when it came time to sleep, but it was all business. They were in a motel room because they were running from people that wanted to ask her questions, and he was topless because blood was dripping down his arm and –

After removing her sweater, Sakura unzipped her med kit and sifted through it, searching for the proper utensils. Pulling out a packaged syringe, needle, and vial, she placed them somewhere within reach as she pulled rubber gloves out of a tiny box slipped into the mesh on the back of her case.

She didn't have any cotton balls, but she _did _have a spray canister of general disinfectant that would have to do. It was really just a precaution, anyway, since she'd already tended to the possibility of infection back at the hospital.

Uncapping the canister, she turned to face her patient only to find him staring at her and her oversized, over stocked kit.

"What?" She asked innocently as she took hold of his bicep.

"High end gear for a travel medical kit." He answered, angling his head to watch as she lightly coated his wound with the disinfectant.

Sakura shrugged as she capped the canister and placed it back in her kit.

"Lucrative side-business stealing and selling drugs, remember? I like to keep some spoils for myself." As she tore open the plastic protecting the syringe, she couldn't keep from grinning at his raised eyebrow. Laughing softly, she decided to answer his unspoken question seriously.

"I'm a surgeon, remember? This is a surgeon's medical kit. Or, well... a surgeon's dream kit. I have access to some drugs and equipment that are only hospital issue because my family owns the medical drug company." Smiling as she injected him with the local anesthetic without receiving any fuss from him, she continued, "So I wasn't _really_ lying when I said I had a side-business selling drugs. I have ownership rights over the company, but I don't spend too much time dealing with the corporate end of things."

He nodded, letting her know that her answer had been sufficient. It kind of irritated her. She was giving him answers! The least he could do would be to return the favour.

Stitching tools in hand, she stood back and popped out her hip, waiting until she got his attention. When his mildly curious gaze met hers, she decided to take the plunge.

"Look, you really need to tell me something about what's going on here," She told him in her best indoor voice, her temper very neatly restrained, "because while you may be under the impression that I don't need to know, I think I really do. Because this?" She gestured at him, his wound and the room around them, "is kind of super new to me. And I'm kind of scared, okay? A lot of stuff in my life has changed over the course of a few hours and I'm still having trouble with that; that it's all because I recognized _you_ while I was doing _my job_."

Taking a deep breath, she did her best to maintain eye contact with him. It wasn't so much the stitching up a wound in a motel room that was new to her as it was the manner with which everything had happened. Many things were terribly out of order and her mind was crashing, falling apart after the hours of stress and trying to piece the events of the day together. She needed to know what kind of cosmic practical joke was being played on her that would thrust Sasuke back into her life so unceremoniously after so many years of nothing.

The look on his face was a familiar mix of irritation and exasperation that she had seen back in her kitchen when she'd been freaking out and demanding answers. She'd figured he wouldn't take one look at her, hear her plead for answers and suddenly fill her in. As such, she had a plan.

The doctor in her was crying out in protest, saying she couldn't withhold treatment from someone in need simply because she wanted answers to her questions, but goddamn, she needed to know _something_. And she had a particular something in mind that, since midmorning, she had been rolling around in her head, darkly curious about.

"I can tell you still don't want to tell me," She said, and Sasuke remained still, his facial expression blank. "So here's the deal," His brow raised slightly at that. "I stitch you up, and in return you answer one, just one, of my questions. Unless of course you feel inclined to tell me more."

Yes, Mr. Uchiha, she was serious. She wanted a trade.

"I think it's fair," She said after a moment of silence. She would not budge. "You know – you _knew_ – me, and you know I won't go back on my word. You start answering my question and I'll have you fixed up."

He seemed to take a moment to weigh the pros and cons of agreeing to her terms. She suspected, after she caught him glance quickly at her medical supplies, that he had even contemplated saying no and stitching himself up. It hadn't really occurred to her that he would even _have_ that particular skill set but, the way things were going, she shouldn't really be all that surprised. Actually, what she would be was pissed off because she'd have lost her chance to make an exchange for information.

Two more minutes passed and Sakura's pulse quickened as the time ticked by before Sasuke finally gave her a curt nod.

"Okay."

"Okay." Sakura repeated, nodding her head and stamping down her anxiety that he would say no and her excitement over a chance to get a single question answered. It was the moment of truth – quite literally – and she couldn't choke on her nervousness. Taking a deep breath, she dove right in.

"Tell me why you were shot."

He looked genuinely startled, and she tried not to feel genuinely offended.

"Oh come on, Sasuke. A knife fell out of a cupboard and cut you like that? Give me some credit! I'm a _surgeon_. Do you think I haven't seen enough wounds come through my ER that I can't notice the difference between a knife wound and a bullet wound?"

Admittedly, she had doubted herself for awhile. She'd been thrown off by thinking Hideo was Sasuke and hadn't wanted to push it by challenging her patient's story by bringing up her suspicions about the way he'd been injured. But as she'd led him out of the room and watched him head for the check-out desk, she'd considered his story and the likelihood that he _was_ lying.

The look on Sasuke's face confirmed her suspicions and she wanted to do a mini back-flip and fist pump for being right. She _did_ know her injuries. Unfortunately, the most she could muster was an internal somersault for accuracy because, holy shit, what was he involved in that someone actually tried and succeeded in _shooting_ Sasuke Uchiha, Konoha High Heartthrob who liked to keep to himself? What was _she_ now involved in?

She resisted the urge to gulp nervously.

"You knew and didn't say anything." He confirmed, and she felt some sort of pride for her ability to be as tight lipped as he was when it came down to it. See, Sasuke? She could keep secrets. So hurry the hell up and tell her what was going on!

"Well, yeah," She said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She took a moment to back-peddle, finding herself unable to maintain her cocky facade, "Well, I had my doubts. I was a little thrown off by you and didn't want to push it. Plus your injury wasn't as severe as I would expect from a bullet wound, but the gash was indicative of one and I had to wonder –"

"The bullet was spent." Sasuke's voice interrupted her.

"What?"

"It'd already lost most of its momentum before it hit me."

"Oh." A spent bullet. She knew what that was. It bothered her slightly that she hadn't immediately drawn that conclusion about his injury, but she was more caught off guard by the fact that he was starting to answer her question.

"Why were you being shot at, Sasuke?" Sakura gently asked him. How bad is this situation? She was convinced the two things were related.

He took a long moment to look at her, as if he were trying to decide what to tell her. He shifted on the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. She recognized his position almost immediately – she and Ino, back in high school, had referred to it as Sasuke's Brooding Pose.

She bit the inside of her bottom lip and waited, knowing that eventually he was going to talk.

"I was checking out a warehouse, and whoever was there wasn't expecting me."

Sakura nodded, coming up to stand beside him and gently take hold of his arm.

"The warehouse by the docks?" Sakura tentatively inquired as she started stitching him up.

He shot her a look that said she was correct again, "Yeah." His eyes narrowed ever so slightly, "how did you know?"

She looked up from her stitching to stare back into his eyes for a moment. Shaking her head, she replied, "I didn't have anything to go off of this time. Just a lucky guess. The warehouse down there is the shadiest one I can think of in Konoha. There are always rumours about smugglers from Kiri using those warehouses for various illegal things, but they're just that, rumours."

'And I happened to think it would be just my luck if you were involved in that sort of thing', she added silently to herself. Honestly, she'd tried to pick the best warehouse she could come up with in Konoha where shots fired would likely go unreported. What had he been doing there?

"Hn."

Sakura gave a weak smile, trying to diffuse the anxiety beginning to coil in her abdomen at the thought of him actually having anything to do with the rumoured smugglers. There were lots of things that happened at warehouses! Lots of reasons for why he was at that particular one that didn't involve extremely dangerous people!

...Right?

"Another rumour I heard from a ten year old visiting his grandma at the hospital was that the warehouse is haunted, so..." So there. He could've been... ghostbusting.

"Shady." He nodded, looking up at her as she finished with stitching his arm. She stepped back, examining her stitches, and noticed the hint of a smirk on his lips. Was he actually trying to help her relieve the tension?

She dumped her utensils into a zip-lock bag, preparing to stow them away until she could find a good place to sterilize them.

"Yeah..." She agreed, "Shady in the kind of way where people have guns and shoot you for sneaking up on them."

And the award goes to Sakura Haruno, for putting the tension right back where it had previously been. It was thick enough it could probably have been its own entity. But still, she was too curious just to turn the whole situation into a ghost story and move on.

Zipping up her medical kit, Sakura pried further after his lack of response to her statement, "What were you doing there, Sasuke?"

He rolled his shoulder and tentatively flexed his arm, focusing on his stitches. She'd used more stitches than she had previously, figuring he probably was going to continue to ignore her orders in the do-not-jostle department. And honestly, Sakura thought, when it came down to it, he could jostle all he wanted if it meant he stopped trigger happy people from kidnapping her.

"I was looking for something," He answered as he stood, picking his bloodied shirt up off the back of the single chair beside the bed, "and the guy who shot me – shot _at_ me, the bullet that hit was a ricochet – didn't want me to find it."

"Did you?" Sakura asked, "Find it, I mean?"

He was standing a foot away from her but his presence was huge – she felt it pressing against her like a wall. She took a few steps back and turned, unable to meet his dark gaze. When had it become like this?

In high school, when she'd hung out with Naruto and Sasuke had been around, she'd never had a hard time looking him in the eye. He'd just been Sasuke Uchiha, boy she sort of maybe had a crush on. Now making eye contact just made her feel...small, like there was ten years of life experience he had in his eyes that she didn't.

"No," he answered after a minute, "I didn't."

"Oh..." Sakura replied quietly, looking up as she felt him brush past her. He was heading for the bathroom, and quickly she scurried into the tight space before him and scooped her pair of shorts up off the floor where they lay, forgotten.

She turned on her heels to leave the tiled room and walked into his bare chest. Stumbling back a step, Sakura dug her free hand into her hair and laughed nervously. Or awkwardly. She preferred to think it was nerves. He was more than a head taller than her, now that she'd bothered to notice. He was also quite a bit bigger.

He quirked a brow at her and gestured towards the small sink with his dress shirt. "Do you mind...?"

Rubbing the back of her head, Sakura plastered her back to the doorway and started to sidle her way out of the room. "No, um, go ahead. I'm just gonna..."

She trailed off as she pulled the door closed behind her and wandered over to the double bed. She dumped her shorts into her duffel along with her closed up med kit.

With a groan, Sakura flopped face first onto the mattress and simply lay there for a moment, not desiring to move. What had happened to her over the last twenty minutes?

The sound of the tap running in the bathroom leaked out into the bedroom – the only other room – and Sakura rolled over on the bed, grabbing a bunch of blanket in her fist.

This was so... surreal. Nine years of nothing from this man, no emails, no calls, hardly any mention of his name in her social circle – Ino had moved on after graduation – and finally, Sakura moved on too. Yeah, she'd dated a collection of people throughout college and the years that followed, but somewhere in the back of her mind she'd always wondered what Sasuke was up to.

When she'd started working full time at the hospital, he'd almost entirely disappeared from her thoughts. And then all of a sudden he was calling himself Hideo and breaking into her house to save her from dangerous men and kidnapping her and staying in a motel room with her while she stitched up his bullet wound and oh, God.

It was like whiplash. She couldn't really wrap her mind around everything that was going on. He seemed so... perfectly okay with the entire situation, and she was out in the cosmos, flailing. Wasn't he experiencing any kind of significant emotion, at all, over being reunited so suddenly with an old friend under such strenuous circumstances?

The water stopped running in the bathroom. Did he even consider her an old friend? If it hadn't been for him saying her name back in her house when he was trying to get her to calm down, she'd have wagered that he didn't even remember her. But did _she_ really remember him? So many of his mannerisms were the same, but there was also so much about him she didn't know or recognize.

If her high school had done one of those cheesy grad surveys, she would never have voted Sasuke Uchiha for 'Most Likely to Get Shot At.' She would have voted Neji for being a pompous jerk or... or Naruto, for constantly picking fights with the wrong people.

Sasuke stepped out of the bathroom, seemingly having hung his shirt over the shower rack to dry over night. As he approached the bed, Sakura really wondered if she had ever known him at all.

"This is stupid..." She mumbled, reaching up behind her to grab hold of one of the overstuffed pillows and pulling it into her arms.

"Hn?"

Sighing, Sakura pushed herself up on the bed and leaned back against the cheap headboard. She hugged the pillow to her stomach and leaned her chin on the end as she stared just to the right of his head.

"I hardly know you," she complained quietly, "I haven't spoken to you or heard about you in nine years. A couple hours ago I was convinced you were crazy."

She darted her eyes to him then, wondering if he remembered her roaring and flinging shoes at him. He was subtly rubbing his forearm where a faint bruise was forming from her battering him with her gaudy platforms. Yeah, she figured he remembered.

"And now I'm here with you, thoroughly confused," she glared at him, letting him know that that was entirely his fault considering he had the solution to the problem and wasn't sharing, "and running from bad people that want to ask me questions. But why?"

Sighing once more, she tilted her head up to begin analyzing the motel room ceiling. It was plaster and art-deco-y, the kind of design that was really hard to clean, all rough and bumpy, and tore up your sponge when you tried to wash it.

"I don't know anything about you. I'm willing to bet I don't have any of the answers to their questions. It wouldn't have hurt me or you if I'd stuck around to tell them as much."

What kind of answers was she supposed to give them about a man she hadn't seen in nine years?

He stared at her a moment before releasing a quiet puff of air and grabbing hold of the wooden chair next to the bed. Dragging it in front of him, he spun it around and straddled it, crossing his arms over the top of the back and looking at her intently.

"You're right."

Shocked, Sakura jerked her gaze downward and stared at him. "I am?"

"You likely don't have the answers they're looking for," he told her coolly, "but they wouldn't believe that at first, not when they heard you say my name."

Sakura frowned, "I'd tell them the truth. That I knew you in high school but we stopped communicating after graduation. That's a common enough occurrence."

"Too common," Sasuke nodded his head once, "and a good cover if you're trying to lie. You don't want to know what they'd do to you before they'd decide you're telling the truth."

Sakura swallowed nervously, digging her fingernails into the soft cushion.

His dark gaze never left hers, "and after they decide you don't have the information they want, you become useless."

Sakura blinked. After a second she laughed nervously, trying to dispel the cool chill that was curling around her spine. "That's when they let me go and we both go our separate ways, right?"

He tilted his head slightly to the side and continued looking at her. She could picture a chibi Naruto hopping around on his shoulder, jabbing his finger at Sasuke's face and looking back at Sakura in indignation complaining, "You see that face? That's his 'yeah right, dumbass' face. Don't give her that face!"

She couldn't bring herself to smile at her mental antics.

"That's when they kill you," he replied, straight faced, "because you know too much."

"W-what?" Sakura choked out, holding the cushion tighter to her body, "that makes no sense! I know too much about nothing so they _kill_ me?"

He sighed exasperatedly and a muscle in the side of his jaw jumped slightly, "You'll know the lengths they went through to get something out of you. That won't go away and you _won't_ recover."

Sakura's jade eyes were wide with alarm. What kind of people wanted information on him? What kind of people were after her? Goosebumps were rising on her bare arms.

"W-who are these people, Sasuke?" She whispered, trying unsuccessfully to hide all the fear in her voice. What kind of things would they do to her to make sure she wasn't keeping secrets? The way Sasuke looked when he told her... she got the feeling the experience would be a horrific one.

He shook his head, clearly not wanting to go as far as to indulge her curiosity by answering that one. But then he looked at her and gave her an answer.

"They're grunts. They work for someone bigger." He looked at her, hard, "And more dangerous."

Sakura had herself almost entirely wrapped around the pillow, much the same way she squeezed a stuffed animal when she was younger and at summer camp, listening to her bunkmates tell scary stories. She felt like a fool under Sasuke's hard stare, but she couldn't let go of the cushion. If she let go, she wouldn't be able to control her shaking.

"Why are they interested in you?" She asked, keeping her voice from wavering with sheer willpower alone.

"Because I'm interested in them."

Sakura's brows furrowed. What? What _was _this? Why was he interested in such dangerous people? Wasn't it prudent to stay away from these types of things when one doesn't work for the police, military or government?

"Why?" She asked him, and he started to get up from his seat on the chair. She leaned forward, raising her voice and asking quickly, "Were they the ones that shot you?"

Sasuke was already standing, putting the chair back beside the bed. He said nothing, but she already felt that his standing up had effectively ended their Q&A session for the night.

"That's enough questions," he confirmed as he sat down on the chair next to the bed and adjacent to the door and shrugged on his jacket. "Go to sleep. We're leaving early."

"Leaving for where?" She questioned him, but he'd already closed his eyes and crossed his arms in front of him, effectively shutting her out.

Yeah, like she was going to be able to fall asleep with visions of torture dancing in her head.

-o0o-

Sakura yawned as she leaned her head against the passenger side door, staring out the window and reading the road signs as Sasuke drove past them.

As she'd correctly assumed, she hadn't gotten much sleep the previous night. Her mind had been too preoccupied with trying to conjure up all the horrific ways terrible people could try to force her to provide answers to questions she didn't understand. A part of her was okay with the insomnia though, figuring it was a fair trade.

Sasuke had answered more questions than he had agreed to earlier. She knew more now than she did before, and she was definitely, _definitely_ more scared. While she still didn't feel as if she really knew Sasuke as much as she used to, or even at all anymore, she felt even more that she had made the right decision in deciding to trust him and leave her home with him.

They'd been on the road for several hours already, and he was incredibly boring travel company. She was trying her best not to bother him, considering that, once again, he had answered more questions last night than he had agreed to, but every now and then she snapped and would talk, non-stop, until his glaring became too powerful to be ignored. The jerk.

She read a familiar name on a large green sign that blew past and she sat up straighter in her seat, futilely glancing back to double check the name.

"Where are we going?" She asked him for the second time that hour. He said nothing, having reverted back to his silent driving from the night before wherein he focused solely on the road.

Sighing, Sakura unhooked her seatbelt and turned around in her seat, grabbing hold of her duffel bag in the back and pulling it closer to her. Slipping her hand into the pockets, she felt around until her fingers touched the cool gloss of the postcard.

She pulled the card out and leaned back in her seat, readjusting her seatbelt as she flipped the card over in her hand to analyze the return address.

In her peripheral vision she noted that her fidgeting had caught Sasuke's attention. Realizing that the name on the road sign _had_ in fact been familiar, she turned in her seat to better face Sasuke as he drove.

"If you won't tell me where we're going, might I suggest a place?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Hn?"

"We're really close to Aido," Sakura started, turning the postcard around in her hand, "and I have a really good friend who lives there. You remember Naruto Uzumaki, right?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed and he looked at her with a curious expression she couldn't quite read.

"Hn." She assumed that meant he remembered their old mutual friend.

"Okay," She chose to ignore his expression and move on, "Well, he purchased an Ichiraku Ramen franchise just out of high school and he's ridiculously wealthy now. I know, right? Who would have thought owning a ramen stand would make you that successful."

Sakura shook her head, laughing. She'd had a good laugh with Naruto over it, years ago, even though he took his ramen extremely seriously.

"Anyway, he lives in Aido now. I've been to his house once or twice – I don't get to visit much what with my job at the hospital in Konoha – but it's really secure and not in an obnoxious way. You could take me there and I could lay low with him for a couple weeks. I've been meaning to visit for...well...years, actually."

Naruto would be really happy to see her. He always was whenever they got the chance to meet up. He'd be... really surprised about her extended vacation, but gleeful. When Sasuke didn't say anything, Sakura continued to push as urban scenery began to appear outside her window.

"I won't tell him anything about what's going on. It's not like I can, anyway, since I don't know much." Sakura shook her head, realizing how much she really didn't know. "I can stay with him until you... fix this."

She figured Sasuke wouldn't be able to go about his business while carting her around and, to her credit, she felt like this was a good idea. She would stay safe and hidden with Naruto until Sasuke's – past? Business? – stopped haunting her. She could also use a big dose of Naruto happiness, considering how bleak things had been becoming.

Sasuke looked up into the rear view mirror and she jumped a little in her seat as he signalled right and began to turn into Aido. Yes! At least she got Naruto out of all of this disaster. She had taken everything from her house that anything to do with him, and the men trying to find her certainly wouldn't look to Naruto for her.

"Thanks," She smiled brightly at Sasuke. He was actually going to take her where she wanted to go. Maybe he wasn't a jerk after all. Plus, since he was actually conceding to this, it comforted her in knowing that Naruto's house would be Sasuke approved for her safety. Either that or he was looking forward to silent car rides in the near future. She preferred to think it was a little bit of both. "I appreciate this."

Sasuke merely nodded as he navigated the streets of downtown Aido. Sakura read Naruto's address off the postcard for Sasuke, realizing that the raven haired man probably didn't know where Naruto lived.

They drove a few more minutes in silence before Sakura spoke again.

"So how long will it be before I can go back home and to work? One week? Two?"

Sasuke shook his head as he turned onto a suburban street.

"Indefinite."

Sakura gawked at him. "What? I'm indefinitely hiding from a group of people that want to capture and torture non-existent information about you out of me?" Did she just squeak? God, she hoped she hadn't.

"Yes, you are." He confirmed as he pulled into the driveway of Naruto's unassuming two-story house. He turned in his seat to face her as he removed his seatbelt. "So accept it, and hide until it's over. Do you understand?"

Sakura frowned at him, incredibly displeased. Displeased and disturbed. How long would she have to be scared of these people finding her?

"Fine," Sakura grumbled after Sasuke refused to budge, continuing to stare at her until she answered. "But I don't like it."

"You don't have to like it." He retorted as he opened his door and exited the car.

Harrumphing, Sakura took her bag from the backseat and closed the door behind her. She made her way up the patio to Naruto's front door, Sasuke several feet behind her.

She shouldered her bag and looked back at him before ringing the doorbell.

"This is odd," she mumbled to him, gesturing at his person after he gave her a questioning look, "With you here. It's just... odd."

He shrugged, sticking his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. "I haven't seen him in awhile."

Sighing, Sakura waited as the sound of footfalls grew louder as Naruto approached the door. He picked up his pace when he saw her through the small glass window beside the entrance.

"Sakura!" Flinging the door open, Naruto enveloped her in a bear hug.

Laughing, Sakura hugged him back, taking in his familiar smell and loving his happiness. She really needed it, what with the day she'd had yesterday.

"Hey, Naruto." Sakura smiled at him as he released her from his embrace and ushered her in.

"I haven't seen you in forever!" He said excitedly, "Did you finally take vacation time? Aww, and you came to see me! I'm flattered." He flashed her a toothy grin, happiness radiating off of him. His glee lost several watts of energy when his cerulean blue eyes landed on her travel mate.

"Hey." Sasuke offered, stepping into the hallway after her.

"H_eeee_y," Naruto responded warily before stepping past her and taking her duffel bag from her shoulder, placing it on the hall floor. "When did you two meet up?"

Sakura didn't get to respond as her world went black.

-o0o-

"Holy fuck! You bastard! What the hell did you do that for!" Naruto shouted as he dropped to catch Sakura's limp and falling form before she hit the floor.

Sasuke lowered his hand that he had used to knock her out.

"I need her out of the picture for a moment," He answered coolly.

"What the fuck, man?" Naruto growled, holding Sakura securely in his arms, "you didn't have to fucking _do_ that!"

"You weren't stuck with her for the past two days." Sasuke countered.

"She's not that bad..." Naruto mumbled, looking down at her unconscious face. Abruptly, he looked back up at Sasuke. "How the hell did you two –"

"We need to talk." Sasuke interrupted the blond, giving him a pointed look. Naruto's eyes widened for a moment, his anger still palpable but slowly dissipating.

"Okay." He nodded, and Sasuke knelt down to take Sakura out of Naruto's arms.

"Where's your guest room?"

Naruto watched him warily as he stood with Sakura, one arm bracing her back and the other hooked underneath her knees.

"Up the stairs, down the hall. Second door on the left."

Sasuke nodded and started to make his way to the stairwell, but stopped as he heard Naruto call out his name behind him.

"What?" Sasuke called over his shoulder.

"She's going to be _so_ fucking pissed when she wakes up."

Yeah, idiot. He already knew that. It was _not_ an experience he was looking forward to.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN) =O The bastard! And here I thought they'd finally come to an understanding of each other T_T This chapter was supposed to be two, but the first two chapters were supposed to be one so... And I had an additional ending scene planned out for this chapter, but since this one is already 2000 words longer than I had intended, I'm making it the beginning of the next chapter. And reading this over, the last half feels odd... but I don't think I can improve it so hopefully it doesn't feel off to you! Hakuna Matata, you know?<strong>

**While my last chapter with Sasuke POV didn't really do much to advance the plot, I really wanted to do it to show my impression of Sasuke during his ponderous silences. I think that he spends a lot of time in his head and that's why he's so quiet, and I wanted to bestow that impression on you all so that hopefully when you read my writing of Sasuke and he's quiet and/or providing monosyllabic responses, you wonder what he's actually thinking. =) **

**Lots of stuff happened in this chapter! We got to know a little more about the people that are hunting Sasuke, and Sakura and Sasuke got to talk more. And yay! Naruto! I love him. Too bad Sasuke had to go and ruin the moment. (Psst, don't worry. I'm not making Sasuke into a cold hearted bastard for the entirety of this story. He gets a moment at the beginning of the next chapter wherein his jackass meter gets to decrease quite a bit and he redeems himself...somewhat). Naruto intrigue, though! Let's focus on that and not Sasuke's dick move knocking her out.**

**Oh, and there's no significance to the city Naruto living in being called Aido. The name just sort of... popped into my head while I was writing and I rolled with it. **

**I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Please leave me a review and let me know! ^_^**

**~dancer-me**


	5. Debrief

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter V: Debrief**

**(AN) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto**

**I know I say this at the beginning of every chapter, but seriously: thank you SO much for the reviews. Your compliments, expressions of interest and words of encouragement mean so much to me as an author! I get so happy when I see review alerts in my inbox – seriously, you reviewers make my day. It's such a wonderful feeling to know that my fanfic has captured interest and that others are enjoying it! **

* * *

><p>"She's going to be <em>so<em> fucking pissed when she wakes up."

Yeah, idiot. He already knew that. It was _not_ an experience he was looking forward to having.

Sasuke made his way up the stairs, holding Sakura's unconscious form securely in his arms. Even as deadweight she weighed hardly anything and didn't cause him any trouble as he ascended the stairs to the second floor.

Glancing down the hallway, he made his way toward the second room on the left. The door was already open and he stepped inside, carrying Sakura over to the bed. The room was nice and simply decorated, the walls painted a warm beige and the blankets a chocolate brown. While Sasuke didn't normally care about interior decorating provided frills were non-existent, he was glad Naruto's fascination with bright orange paint hadn't extended past the blonde's bedroom walls.

Reaching the edge of the double bed, Sasuke bent and gently lay Sakura down on top of the blankets. Her long pink hair splayed out on the pillows beneath her head, the bright pink meshing well with the cream coloured pillowcase.

Sasuke stepped away from the bed but still found his eyes focused on the resting woman. In her sleep she looked almost... ethereal, her delicate features relaxed and well suited for her complexion. In the solitude of his mind, he'd concede that she was attractive, pretty even, and would probably be beautiful if her forehead was just a little smaller. But then, he noted, she'd be even more conspicuous along with the pink hair.

It didn't surprise him that he'd never looked at her this way before. Usually she only captured his attention when she was irritating him and her appearance, while not unpleasant, had never really been relevant to the issue. She talked too much; asked too many questions. Those things annoyed him, even though he knew they were reactions any normal person would have to the events of the past two days. She was actually handling it fairly well, but still that wasn't enough to eliminate his bad mood when it came to her annoying questioning.

But she wasn't being annoying now, while she lay unconscious, and he wondered briefly if she'd always looked like this or if it was just a development he'd missed over the nine years he hadn't seen her and occasionally thought of her.

It didn't matter. Sakura was who she was now; an attractive woman he probably wouldn't have recognized were it not for her unique hair colour. Her personality had been an afterthought, otherwise he would have taken her temper into consideration before letting her out of her closet. It was disconcerting that he didn't know as much about the woman as he had allowed her to know about him when they'd been younger, but her temper had been somewhat legendary and thus incredibly hard to miss.

He likely wouldn't comprehend why he ever thought she was pretty when she woke up and her face contorted in anger after realizing that he knocked her out, but that was still several hours away. There were probably other, more tedious ways he could have gone about getting her out of the way long enough to have a much needed private conversation with Naruto, but short of locking her in yet another closet, none would have been as effective.

He would take her wrath in exchange for a solid few hours of uninterrupted debriefing followed by silence. The guestroom was cool and, still focused on Sakura, he could see small goose bumps beginning to form on her arms. She was going to be angry with him anyway, but there was no point in exacerbating the problem by letting her freeze while she slept.

Approaching her again, he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her enough to pull the blankets out from under her body. Having freed the comforter and sheet, he placed her back on the mattress and pulled the blankets up over her torso and let them fall just below her collar.

He needed to talk to Naruto. The blond was either downstairs putting two and two together or going apeshit wondering what was taking Sasuke so long just to put Sakura in a bed. Turning, Sasuke left the pinkette to her unexpected sleep and headed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. He didn't need to give the blond anymore time to concoct lewd reasons for his extended absence.

Sakura, however, was still going to be a major topic of discussion.

-o0o-

"You sent her a _postcard_?" Sasuke accused as soon as he stepped out onto the back deck and found Naruto perched on the edge of a lawn chair.

The blond jumped and lifted his head at the sound of Sasuke's voice. Seemingly no longer needing to be anxiously suspicious about what Sasuke was doing with Sakura alone, Naruto relaxed and slumped back further in his chair and stared at him as he dropped down into an adjacent seat.

"What about it?" Naruto questioned before his blue eyes widened dramatically and a grin formed on his face, "you _jealous_?"

What? Sasuke glared at him, but otherwise refused to dignify that stupid question with an answer. He hadn't seen the woman in nine years and he didn't _do_ jealous. He did, however, have other issues.

"You sent her a postcard," Sasuke reiterated, "when we were on a _mission_?"

"What?" Naruto said, sounding mildly confused before realization came to him, "Oh! You mean from when we were in Snow?"

Sasuke nodded, remembering the glossy photo on the card that had been among others splayed across Sakura's coffee table. The alps in the image were both beautiful and ominous in the evening light, the snow covered peaks almost obscured from vision by the blizzard that had been beginning when the photo had been taken. It was a popular tourist location and one he and Naruto had not been to, but still he had not been too pleased to see Naruto's name on the return address.

"Yeah, I sent her a postcard," the blond shrugged, "It's not a big deal. Plus, it was necessary."

Sasuke's eyebrow went up at this.

"It's not a big deal that you could have blown our cover _and_ the operation because you sent a postcard, with your actual name on it, back to Konoha?"

"Chill out, asshole," Naruto waved his hand in the air, "I didn't send it from our actual location. And like I said: it was necessary."

"Necessary _how_?" Sasuke asked incredulously.

"To maintain my cover." Naruto answered slowly, as if he were talking to an idiot.

Sasuke scowled and leaned back in his chair. "You told her you were going on vacation, didn't you?"

The huge grin the blond was wearing confirmed Sasuke's accusation.

"Yup!" The grin disappeared off his face as he looked Sasuke in the eyes, a clear sign he was finished kidding around. "I talk to her regularly, so if I didn't turn it into a vacation and just dropped off the map? She'd get worried. And a concerned Sakura is surprisingly efficient and _that_ could have blown our cover."

"Plus," the blond continued, leaning back in his chair, "I'm a wealthy owner of a ramen chain. It makes sense that I'd go on vacation to anyone who is even remotely suspicious. Which they're not, by the way, because I'm awesome at this. _You're_ the one who can't sign any fucking postcards, you ghost."

It pissed him off that the idiot was right. Disappearing for weeks or months at a time when one communicated regularly with someone was incredibly suspicious and sending a postcard from a popular tourist attraction was the most efficient way to quell any concerns. Naruto using his own name was also not a huge problem, considering he was right again – Sasuke felt the need to twitch – in saying that it made sense for a young man sitting on a boatload of money to go travelling and no one in the area would suspect anything of him if anything – or anyone – suspicious went down.

It just complicated things how the blond felt the need to maintain old friendships and ties. Especially ones that affected him.

"For fucks sake, Naruto. Why did you have to keep in contact with her?" Sasuke muttered, irritated.

Naruto bristled.

"Because she's _Sakura_, jerk, and one of my best friends. It's not like I was going to start ignoring her after I got recruited."

The 'unlike you, dickhead, after we graduated high school' was left unspoken, but didn't go unnoticed by him. Sasuke sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"You make things complicated when you maintain communication with old acquaintances."

Sasuke had been the perfect pick for a field operator for the clandestine organization they worked for because he had no family and had no such attachments. The more people who knew you personally, the more opportunities there were for mistakes to be made. It was better to go without those hindering connections.

"Says the douchebag who showed up on my doorstep with Sakura. What the fuck happened in Konoha, anyway?"

Yesterday had been a fantastic example of his point. If he hadn't have felt a connection to Sakura, the pink-haired surgeon could have just been collateral damage. Sometimes innocent people had to die in order for more innocent people to be safe. But he hadn't been able to leave her at the mercy of the people who were tracking him. He'd felt that personal pull, knew how Naruto would feel if anything happened to her, and now he was stuck with extra talkative pink baggage for the rest of the mission.

Feelings fucked up a lot of things in the world Sasuke operated in, but Naruto still refused to lose his emotions. Sometimes he wondered how Naruto had ended up in this world, on his team, as his partner, with the way he fucking felt _everything_. They worked well together, both had no family, but their similarities essentially stopped there.

Still, Sasuke didn't trust anyone else as much as he trusted Naruto, his best friend since middle school when the overly hyperactive boy hadn't given him a choice, and it was time to debrief.

"I fucked up at the warehouse." Sasuke said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and staring at the clear rippling water that was reflecting the light blue of the pool lining in Naruto's in ground pool.

"That where you got hit?"

Sasuke nodded, knowing Naruto wouldn't have missed the tell-tale tear in his jacket or the way he'd favoured his right arm when he picked Sakura up.

"I missed a guard on my first sweep. knocked out the two at the doors and the two inside – I should have expected a third one. He had shit aim, though. If I hadn't been the only other one there I probably wouldn't have known he was shooting at me. He got lucky with a ricochet."

Naruto nodded, leaning forward in his chair and angling his head to get a better look at him and his arm.

"Did you take him out?"

"No," Sasuke shook his head, "too risky. I ducked out before I bled all over the place."

Naruto sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. "So they definitely know we're on to them now, then. Unless the guard's trigger happy and just got spooked."

Naruto sounded optimistic about the guard being hasty with his trigger and Sasuke laced his fingers together, thinking back to yesterday morning.

"I thought so too at first," Sasuke informed him, "but I don't feel the same way anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"I had to go to the hospital to get my wound stitched. I hadn't restocked my kit since the last time."

Naruto knew that there was a greater risk for infection from a ricochet bullet, and he also knew how much it fucking sucked to have to take leave in the middle of an Op because of infection. He _also_ likely remembered the Director's sadistic form of punishment for that kind of setback because of carelessness. The blond was shuddering slightly, most likely remembering the time he'd gotten an infection in his leg last year and had been strapped to a chair and forced to listen to Icha Icha being dictated to him for hours. Needless to say, the two operators were very fastidious about taking care of their injuries.

The real gravity of the situation hadn't seemed to reach the blond yet, so Sasuke gave one more important detail.

"I went to Konoha General."

"Oh, fuck." Naruto breathed, suddenly realizing how Sakura had entered the picture.

"Yeah." Sasuke agreed. Fuck was a good way of putting it. "She ended up being my surgeon and recognized me. Said my name out loud."

"Sh_iiiiiii_t..."

"I watched her house that night and they made a move on her. I knocked them out and took her with me. It was fucking harder to get her to calm down and go with me than it was to take down the three targets."

Sasuke ran a hand down his face, a signature sign that he was well on his way to being exhausted in both body and patience. "And she's been fucking grilling me with questions ever since."

Naruto scrunched up his nose. "Why didn't you just knock her out sooner then?" He chirped sarcastically. Obviously, he still wasn't too pleased with Sasuke's chosen method of keeping Sakura from this conversation.

"Do you know how conspicuous it looks to drive around with an unconscious woman in your backseat?" Sasuke answered him honestly, a hint of _are you a dumbass_ evident in his voice, if only just to piss Naruto off.

"I was fucking kidding, asshole. Sakura didn't deserve that." Naruto snapped, crossing his arms under his chest.

"I don't fucking _care_, idiot." Sasuke countered, the muscles in his shoulders tensing, "I needed her to be quiet and sit this conversation out and locking her in a closet again has its disadvantages."

"Locking her in a closet _again_?" Naruto questioned, tilting his head slightly to the side.

Sasuke just shook his head.

"I'm not getting into it. The point is she threw her fucking shoes at me, and I'm not in the mood for round two just yet."

The blond was silent for a moment before bursting out into laughter. He slapped his knee dramatically and leaned back into his chair. With a huge grin on his face and laughter still in his voice, he said, "Oh fuck, that's priceless. She threw her _shoes_ at you? Serves you fucking right for getting her involved in this."

It was Sasuke's turn to bristle.

"How the hell is this my fault?" He ground out, not finding the humour in having pointy, heavy objects thrown at him with impressive strength for such a small person.

"Because recognizing you is like a fucking death sentence," Naruto retorted, "which she would have known if you kept in contact with her."

"Do you think she would have been safer if we'd talked over the years? I don't. " Sasuke responded seriously, "and people want to kill me because I'm good at what I do. I can't fucking change that."

"Shit, I know." Naruto conceded, all traces of mirth gone, "I'm sorry. You do enough field work and all the major players start to know you, no matter what your cover is. I just wish Sakura..." Naruto shook his head, "these are definitely people I didn't want her getting involved with."

Sasuke knew the feeling. If the people they were investigating were anything like who they thought they were, they were likely the most dangerous targets he and Naruto had ever gone up against. They were brutal, sadistic bastards. Sakura was a vulnerable source of information and didn't deserve to be mixed up with them. If something happened to her, it would be his fault by extension. That was another reason why he needed her here, tucked away safely until he and Naruto could complete the mission.

"I know," Sasuke answered after a moment.

"Thanks for getting her out of there." Naruto said sincerely, maybe even more so because he likely knew Sasuke had contemplated leaving her to her own fate. Sometimes his partner knew him too well.

"Hn."

"So let's get back to business," Naruto said, knowing better than to dwell on that moment, "they were able to follow you back from the warehouse to Konoha General Hospital?"

Sasuke shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it over the arm of his chair.

"Either that or they've got people inside the hospital. I wouldn't be fucking surprised if that were the case. A police officer was part of the party that broke into Sakura's house."

Naruto cursed, his hands balling into fists over his knees.

"They've spread faster than we thought, Sasuke. How big are they really, now?" Naruto was obviously disturbed by the possibility of corruption in so many of the Konoha institutions. "We've gotta take this syndicate down, and soon, but we have hardly anything to fucking go off of."

The truth was undeniably frustrating. They had months of investigation and hardly anything to show for it. Whoever they were dealing with was incredibly good at covering their tracks. But...

"I didn't gather much in the warehouse, other than that something's got them on edge," Sasuke informed Naruto as he fished a hand around in his jacket pocket, searching for the item he'd stowed away the other day, "but I did get something off one of the men who was meant to attack Sakura."

He passed the small metallic object to Naruto, dropping it in the palm of his hand for him to look at.

"It's a pin of some sort. Do the initials H.C mean anything to you?"

Naruto shook his head, even as he rotated the object in his hand and examined the engraved initials in the gold tinted metal.

"No, but I'll look into it." Naruto looked up at Sasuke, his blue eyes dark and serious, "This could be a dead end though, Sasuke."

Sasuke nodded; he knew that. "It's one of the only leads we have, so it's worth a check. I've also got the names of the Officer and the Suit I liberated that from."

Naruto's eyebrows shot up. "They actually had ID on them? What the fuck?"

"I know." Sasuke agreed. You learned in fucking espionage 101 not to carry identification on your person for any kind of potentially hostile situation, and yet two of these targets who were allegedly sent from the dangerous syndicate they were investigating had made that blunder. It could be a coincidence, or it could mean something.

"Well write 'em down and hand 'em over," Naruto said after a minute, shrugging the odd feeling off, "I'll do some research and see if they're fake or not."

"Hn." Sasuke leaned back in his chair. So far, they knew a whole lot of nothing and were going heavily off of speculation. Hopefully, that would be changing soon.

"Naruto," Sasuke said after ten or so minutes of almost silence, the only sounds being that of nature and the quiet rippling of the pool water in the light breeze. "They're definitely preparing for something."

"How do you know?"

Sasuke was quiet a moment. "Gut feeling," he said, "the tension at the warehouse was too thick for bad guys without a plan."

Naruto nodded. In their field, gut feelings were sometimes more reliable than what they considered to be facts. Only the unwise chose to ignore them.

"We need to pick up the pace of this Op," Naruto said what he already knew, "since there's a big chance they know we're on to them. They could try to speed things up since they don't know how little we actually know."

That was definitely a legitimate concern. If the syndicate started to work faster to achieve their goals – whatever _they_ were – his and Naruto's team being at an even bigger disadvantage would be the least of his concerns.

"How much does Sakura know?" Naruto asked, turning in his chair to face him.

"Not much."

"I think you should tell her what's going on."

"_What_?" Sasuke hissed, startled.

"I think it's for the best," Naruto didn't back down despite the wholly dangerous look Sasuke knew he was giving him, "She's staying here until we take these people down – that's non-negotiable."

"Aa." That was Sasuke's intention in bringing here. But why the fuck...?

Naruto seemed to notice where Sasuke's confusion lay. "If we keep her out of this, we have to be careful all the time so she doesn't pick up on anything. That's not gonna help our time issue, man."

Naruto shook his head. "And she's not stupid. She'll figure it out eventually and all we'll be is a shit ton of workable hours in the hole."

Fuck. Naruto had a point on that front, but there were way more issues at hand here.

"Are you _crazy_?" Sasuke shot back, "This is shit she doesn't need to know or be involved in –"

"But she's already involved in it now, thanks to _you_." Naruto interrupted him.

" – and the more information she knows the more dangerous it gets for _all_ of us."

"Like I said, she's already involved in this. If that mistake in the warehouse hadn't happened, you wouldn't have had to nab her and she would be safe in Konoha right now instead of being fucking hunted by these lunatics!" Naruto's voice got louder.

Naruto knew that some mistakes were inevitable on missions, but Sakura's safety was an incredibly sensitive topic for the blond and topped his understanding of the risks. Sasuke knew all this and thus refused to take the bait to start arguing over what happened in the warehouse. Still, that didn't make Naruto and his argument any less annoying.

"Jesus, Naruto," He growled, irritated, "Sharing intel could be detrimental to the mission."

"It's not like we have that much intel to begin with, Sasuke." Naruto reasoned obnoxiously, "And learn to freakin' _trust_ people. Sakura's not going to sell us out."

Sasuke leaned back in his chair, thoroughly irritated. His trust issues were entirely grounded in reason. The world they operated in was full of deceit and backstabbing. Trusting people was often a dangerous and unnecessary gamble. But Sakura... fuck, it was obvious she wasn't about to screw them over and compromise the mission. If _he_ had remembered that she wanted to go to Med School, he would have avoided the hospital and she wouldn't be involved in this at all.

If she knew what was going on, she'd stop asking questions. Perhaps she'd understand the gravity situation and freak out. Or maybe she'd surprise him and handle it well. Either way, knowing more information put her and the operation at more risk if she were ever to be caught by members of the syndicate. He'd voice those concerns, but he wasn't in the mood for Naruto's, 'We won't let her get caught – believe it!' cocky exclamation, even though he had no intention of letting them get to her, either.

The blond had made up his mind and fuck, Sasuke needed some solid few hours of sleep if he was losing to the idiot so easily during this entire conversation. Then again, his position on the team wasn't necessarily to be the voice of reason. This Op needed to be finished as fast as possible, and if debriefing Sakura was the easiest way, then fuck it, he'd tell her what little they knew.

"Hn." Sasuke knew Naruto would correctly interpret the acceptance in his tone.

Naruto pointed at him dramatically. "Sakura's here because of _you_, so I nominate you to tell her what's going on. Just leave me out of it, 'k?"

"Do you have any idea how much you piss me off?" Sasuke ground out.

"Do you have any idea how much I don't fucking _care_?" Naruto countered cheerfully, getting up out of his chair and staring down at him seriously, "this is _your _goatfuck, so fix it."

"Whatever." Sasuke said as he stood as well, grabbing his jacket off the arm of his chair. He turned and headed towards the sliding glass door that led into Naruto's kitchen. "I'm going to have a quick nap and a shower. I'll talk to her when she wakes up."

Naruto nodded, following him into the house and sliding the door shut behind him. "You look like shit – that's a good idea."

Sasuke shot the blond a glare over his shoulder and Naruto grinned, meandering over to the cupboards and riffling around.

"I'm gonna have me some ramen!" He informed Sasuke gleefully, before poking his head around the open door of the cupboard he was perusing, "I'll look into the pin and the initials later. Write those names down before you go?"

Sasuke grabbed a pad of paper with the Ichiraku Ramen symbol on it off the counter and fished a pen out from one of Naruto's kitchen drawers. Scribbling down the names, he slid the pad over to Naruto. With a curt nod, he left the kitchen and headed for the stairs.

As he reached the second floor, he veered right down a hallway across from the one that held the guestroom Sakura currently occupied and Naruto's orange bedroom. He pushed open the door at the end of the hall, finding the second guest bedroom that had been morphed into Sasuke's room over the years.

The walls were a simple white and the bedspread was navy blue. The furniture in the room was simple – a dresser, a desk and a locked cabinet next to his closet. On the desk was his laptop, plugged in and charging, just the way he'd left it before he had headed out to investigate the warehouse in Konoha. He'd use it to access the agency databases after he got some sleep and cleaned himself up.

And maybe, if he timed it right, Sakura would wake up before him and take out her rage on Naruto. But lately things hadn't been working out too well for him and he knew, as he stripped out of his clothes and fell into his bed, that he just wouldn't be that lucky.

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><p><strong>(AN) Alas, some of the mystery had to be divulged in this chapter for my story to progress! Who Sasuke is and is working for isn't really the main mystery of my story – I'm more concerned with who Sasuke is interested in and why and what they plan to do. Hopefully this whole chapter also didn't feel like a giant recap :-S<strong>

**I love the Naruto and Sasuke relationship. I sideways-v-3-them. =P (my boys have potty mouths ^_^) Next chapter we'll see Sakura waking up and what ensues. Eventually **_**something**_**'s gotta give otherwise those two are going to be cat fighting for the rest of my story! =O**

**I'm going to try to get a couple more updates out in the next week before I go on vacation for a few weeks sans internet!**

**I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! As always, please review. =)**

**~dancer-me**


	6. Fallout

**~ A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter VI: Fallout**

**(AN) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor will I ever, but I maintain my rights to fantasize. **

**Thank you for the reviews! You readers inspire me to continue writing =) I love receiving feedback! It's going to be a couple weeks before my next update, so please enjoy!**

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><p>Sakura walked the halls of Konoha General in a daze – everything she looked at was foggy and twisted. Forlornly she looked down at her left hand and confirmed that, as she had feared, she had no coffee to make everything better. She accepted the lack of caffeine in her system as a plausible excuse for her distorted vision and moved on. After all, she really was lacking in the sleep department and anything was possible.<p>

Waving at the woman at the front counter, Sakura turned the corner and headed towards the break room. There was always coffee there – the quality was questionable, but caffeine was caffeine and beggars couldn't be choosers. Maybe that lovely middle-aged nurse brought in her hazelnut mix again...

Sakura pushed open the door to the room and exhaled a sigh of bliss, noting the large bed in the middle of the room. The blankets were puffy and red and she was willing to bet thoroughly squishy. Unable to resist temptation, Sakura sidled over to the new object of her undying affection and poked at the comforter, giggling as it compressed like foam around her finger. She looked left and right, realizing that there was no one in the room except for her and the panda that was making coffee.

No coffee currently available to be had, Sakura gleefully threw herself onto the bed and curled up on top of the blankets. Feeling slightly chilly – the air conditioning was always blasting in areas with a kitchenette – Sakura burrowed underneath the blankets and cooed as the softness enveloped her.

The bed didn't have a pillow though, and her neck was uncomfortably craned, creating an ache in the back of her neck. The problem was quickly solved, however, when the panda brought her a cup of coffee and then promptly morphed into a fluffy squirrel. They exchanged pleasantries before Sakura grasped the squirrel and tucked him under her head.

The ache was still present, and Sakura rolled over, angling her head differently atop her squirrel. Her squirrel was saying something, probably nagging her to wake up and get back to work, but Sakura liked it where she was, in her bed, in her house, inhaling the familiar smell of her laundry detergent as she clung to sleep.

Except this smell was definitely not her chosen detergent scent. She used lavender, because the scent was known to relax the mind and muscles which was just what she needed after a long day of work. Her current blankets smelled more like mountain rain, all cool and breezy and not at all soothing that persistent ache in the back of her neck and suddenly an anvil dropped onto her abdomen.

"Ah!" Sakura jolted in bed, pushing herself upright on the mattress.

Sucking in a deep breath, she took in her surroundings. She had been dreaming, and this was definitely not her room. The blankets were brown and the room was noticeably smaller than hers back at her house. The door was across from the bed, and along the wall next to it was a writing desk equipped with a fairly comfortable looking wooden chair.

There was a wardrobe against the wall adjacent to her, and beside it was a bookshelf filled with – Sakura tossed aside the covers and padded over to the shelf, perusing the contents.

If the strange familiarity of the laundry detergent hadn't been enough to confirm her suspicions, the ramen menu and comic books mixed in amongst the shelf with a collection of the classics in order to cater to her particular reading tastes was enough solid evidence. She knew this room. This was where she slept the few times she had come to visit Naruto in the past.

Tenderly rubbing the back of her neck, Sakura looked back at the rumpled bed curiously. How had she gotten in the bed? Wracking her brain, she didn't remember much past arriving in Naruto's entryway and receiving a heavenly and much needed hug.

Her eyes travelled to the digital clock sitting on the bedside table that read 4:27 PM in bright red digits. When had Sasuke dropped her off at Naruto's house? She couldn't, for the life of her, remember. Somehow she had made her way upstairs and, looking around the room, she noted that her bag had not.

Sakura glanced down at herself and confirmed that she was still in her red tank top and sweats from the sleepless night at the motel. Perhaps she'd been so exhausted that she'd just snuggled up in Naruto's arms and fallen asleep. Knowing her sleepless schedule the past few days before Sasuke's surprise visit, she wouldn't be all too surprised if that were the case.

Still... it didn't quite explain why the back of her neck was bothering her so much. First things first, she figured. She'd find Naruto and have the potentially awkward conversation wherein she figured out how she managed to fall asleep and make it upstairs, and then she'd grab her bag and take a look at her neck. Maybe, if she was lucky, sometime between her leaving her room and finding Naruto her memory would miraculously catch up with her and she wouldn't have to embarrass herself by asking.

Leaving the room, Sakura quietly pulled the door shut and walked down the hallway, poking her head into Naruto's bright orange room. The blond was nowhere in sight but, as per usual, his room was meticulously clean.

Backing up, Sakura walked in the opposite direction towards the stairs. As she descended the steps, she looked about the house. The stairs were in a small foyer that branched off from the front hallway. To her left when she reached the bottom of the stairs was a very open-concept living room, with big, comfy brown leather couches and a large flat screen television.

Scattered on the coffee table in the middle of the room were a couple outdated nature magazines and what Sakura knew was likely the latest season of 'The Unlucky Princess' on DVD. Naruto had always had a thing for the lead actress.

Not seeing the blond sprawled across one of the couches, Sakura headed right, through the foyer, past the open door to Naruto's study – an office Sakura suspected he didn't ever make much use of – and stepped into his spacious kitchen.

Naruto must have had his kitchen redone within the last few years, Sakura mused as she ran a finger along the cool marble countertop of the island centered in the room. In fact, the whole layout looked as if it came right out of a home decorating magazine. There were stainless steel and cast iron pots and pans dangling from a rack above the counter, looking new and for the most part, unused.

That is, except for the sizable pot that was sitting on the stove with the lid slightly askew. Sakura approached the pot and glanced inside, confirming her suspicions. Her nose was assaulted by the smell of chicken flavoured ramen, despite the fact that most of the pots contents had already been scooped up and likely devoured.

Sakura placed the lid back on the pot properly and walked up to the sliding glass door that led into Naruto's backyard. The afternoon sun was reflecting beautifully off the clear water in his pool, and the flowers decorating the yard were colourful and in full bloom. There were a couple patio chairs clustered together on the deck, in the perfect position to overlook the yard and remain in the shade.

Naruto was perched on the ledge of the deck, his back to the chairs. Sakura slid the door open and stepped outside, closing it behind her. As the door clicked shut, Naruto's head perked up and he turned to glance at the cause of the sound.

"Hey," Sakura greeted as she went to sit down on the deck next to him.

"Hey!" Naruto grinned at her, patting the spot beside him on the deck. Sakura sat and took note of the steaming ramen bowl resting on his lap, chopsticks lying across the top.

"Still your favourite meal?" Sakura asked amiably, gesturing towards the ramen. Naruto smiled and grasped the chopsticks, scooping up a huge amount of noodles in one fell swoop and swiftly devouring them.

"Mhm!" Naruto mumbled, his mouth full. Sakura smiled at the look of sheer happiness on the blonde's face. He looked good and just like she remembered him, cheerful and healthy and a unique mixture of hyperactive and laid back. She may have ended up here because of a rather unexpected turn of events, but his company was probably exactly what she needed to relax her and the closest thing she currently had to home.

"Sorry about the surprise visit," she said after Naruto swallowed his mouthful. "I should have called to tell you I was coming, but..." 'But it was a rather spontaneous decision derived from my desire to no longer be in Sasuke's irritatingly cryptic and dangerous company.' She had promised Sasuke she wouldn't mention what had happened over the past few days, so some details were definitely better left unsaid.

Had Sasuke left after dropping her off here? That wouldn't surprise her were it the case – they hadn't been doing too great a job when it came to getting along. She had questions that she wanted answers to, but Sasuke had been increasingly difficult. After that talk in the motel though... she didn't think she could really blame him. If the people that had tried to – kidnap her? Take her prisoner? – were really as dangerous as he described, she wouldn't want to be openly conversing about them, either.

Sakura sighed and leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees and breathing in the fresh afternoon air. She should probably apologize to Sasuke for pestering him so much. Yeah, she'd been caught off guard by this whole situation and yeah, he could've been more helpful, but she really had lain the questioning on thick.

Maybe they could just... call a truce and agree on some terms. Sakura had a funny feeling though that the process of agreeing on terms would be a high tension situation and not much more pleasant than their previous encounters since the man resurfaced in her life.

But if he was gone already the whole situation would be moot, wouldn't it? The thought was kind of... disappointing. For him to disappear from her life just as suddenly as he had returned left her with a feeling she didn't quite understand. Maybe it was worry, given the dangerous nature of the situation he seemed to be in. If she never saw or heard from him again, would she ever know if it was because he wanted it to be that way or because something bad had happened to him?

Unnerved, Sakura shook her head and tried to dispel the thought. Sasuke was a mystery, and she was just freaking herself out and doing nobody any good by worrying. If he was gone from her life he was gone, and things wouldn't be any different than they'd been for the past nine years. Except, she couldn't help but feel that, after seeing him again, it would be that much harder to forget about him once more.

"Don't worry about it," Naruto said, his voice pulling Sakura out of her head. Surprised, Sakura looked up at him. Was he reading her mind? But then she remembered that she'd apologized for showing up at his house unannounced and relaxed, considerably. Her mind when Sasuke was on it was _definitely_ not a place Naruto should ever venture. "You're always welcome here!"

The blond slung his arm over her shoulder and pulled her closer, as if to keep her from running off. "Ya know," he started in a conspiratorial voice, "in fact, you should really visit me more often."

Sakura laughed and swatted his arm away, but didn't move from her position next to him. "I know," she sighed, looking down at her toes as she scrunched them in the soft grass, "I should have come sooner. I get so caught up with the hospital and –" Sakura glanced up into his blue eyes that were fully focused on her and she felt a pang of guilt in her stomach. If it hadn't been for her encounter with Sasuke, she probably would have put off coming to visit even more. "I'm sorry."

"Well you're here now, right?" Naruto consoled happily, setting his empty ramen bowl on the deck beside him and bracing his hands behind him. "So don't worry about it. How have you been?"

Truthfully, she'd been a lot better before the events of last night, but again, those were comments she could do without.

"Tired," she answered honestly, reaching down to pluck a blade of grass from the ground, "I've been working a lot of long and late shifts at the hospital."

"I've been well, though," Sakura added when she noticed the concerned look on his face. She knew he was thinking that she worked too hard but was going to refrain from mentioning it, lest he encounter her wrath. She always felt 'too hard' just seemed like the wrong approach to her situation. It was more that she took her work very seriously and liked to get as much done possible in a day.

It was because of her dedication to practicing medicine that she'd brought home the file on her patient she'd had that consultation with early yesterday so she could look it over. There was a lot of research she needed to do if she wanted to find a way to fix his affliction, and so that manila folder was currently wedged into the side of her duffel bag, somewhere in this house.

"What about you?" Sakura asked him enthusiastically, noting that his face was still scrunched up as if he were still contemplating bringing up her work habits and wanting to make that look go away, "I got your postcard from Snow but never got a chance to write back. How was the rest of your trip?"

Naruto's attention went elsewhere then and she could tell he was no longer considering worrying over her. He leaned back on his braced arms and looked up at the sky, smiling.

"It was...cold," he started, and Sakura snorted. Naruto laughed and lifted a hand to ruffle his hair thoughtfully.

"Really pretty, though," he continued, tilting his head to look at her, "it was a successful trip. I got to do everything I wanted to do and the whole vacation went really smoothly."

"A vacation in Snow sounds nice," Sakura said wistfully then, surprising herself. When had she ever been one for fantasizing about vacation? Wasn't she sort of on one right now?

Naruto laughed his surprise.

"You should go sometime, then. Sasuke and I liked it there. At night when there's a blizzard? Damn, it's the coolest thing ever!"

Sakura blinked back at him. Did he just...?

"Sasuke went with you?" Sakura asked him after a moment, and Naruto's smile wavered a bit as he averted his gaze to just over her shoulder. "You didn't mention him at all in your postcard."

"Y_eeea_h," Naruto began, his hand back to tangling in his hair, "Sasuke kind of wanted to... lay low."

Sakura frowned, though she couldn't tell whether it was solely directed at her increasingly anxious looking friend or at her accelerated heart rate. What had Sasuke meant then when he said "I haven't seen him in awhile" if he'd been on that vacation with Naruto not too long ago? From Naruto's lack of mentioning Sasuke ever in any of their conversations, Sakura had assumed Sasuke's definition of 'awhile' was somewhere in the 'since graduation' realm.

"_How_ low?" She inquired, shifting a bit to the side to put her face back into Naruto's line of vision. When he said nothing, Sakura narrowed her eyes and said, "Nine years low?"

Naruto grimaced and risked a glance into her eyes and just like that, Sakura knew.

"Naruto!" Sakura said loudly, smacking his arm with her hand, "You two kept up with each other after graduation?" she threw her hands up into the air after a moment, "Why am I surprised? Best friends don't just disappear on each other."

No, they didn't disappear on each other. They just kept her, the third wheel, out of the loop. Sakura's face fell. Had Sasuke realized how she felt in high school and promptly cut the ties of their friendship as soon as he could? It seemed like such a stupid thought to be having at the time, but she had it nonetheless. Why else would he choose to stay in contact with Naruto and not her, even the tiniest bit? God, years ago she'd only hoped to be his friend, but had she really not even achieved that much?

"It wasn't like that..." Naruto whispered, having seen the sadness creep into her facial expression and making Sakura suspicious yet again of his potential mind reading skills. Naruto had known about her feelings back in high school, and given his close friendship with Sasuke, he probably had also known how absolutely hopeless and unrequited her feelings had been.

"What was it like?" God, did she just ask that? After nine years, anything even remotely to do with Sasuke wasn't supposed to interest her anymore. She felt nosy and embarrassed, but even more so considering she was refraining from scrambling to assure Naruto that he didn't have to tell her. She wanted to know too much.

"We went to college together," Naruto started, fiddling now with the hem of his shirt, "We took different programs but we were on the same campus and...yeah. I just never thought to mention him to you when we talked because, well..." He looked up at her through his unfairly long eyelashes and huffed, realizing that she was going to make him finish his sentence.

"I didn't want to upset you." Naruto finished quietly.

Upset her? It was Sakura's turn to squirm in her seat.

"I'm a big girl, Naruto," Sakura replied softly, "I can handle hearing about you two and what you've been up to." Even as she said the words and Naruto nodded slowly, she knew that she wasn't as big as she thought she was. Wasn't she, at this very moment, upset that Sasuke had completely lost touch with her and not Naruto? She could probably lie and say her hurt feelings were entirely because Naruto had been keeping secrets from her, but both of them would see right through it.

Sasuke hadn't wanted to keep up with her then, and likely didn't want to now, either. It seemed that her showing up in his life was as much as surprise to him as it was to her. While she was on that train of thought, the likelihood that the dark haired man had already left after dropping her off increased exponentially. She didn't like the sad feeling that thought left in her gut.

She hadn't done much so far to prove to him that she was worth keeping up with, had she? She'd attacked him, pestered and annoyed him. Great start, Sakura. He really knows what he's been missing.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Naruto apologized, even though he could probably see through her as well as she could. Hell, if he was reading her mind, he probably knew how ridiculous she was.

"It's okay," she said, her hand subconsciously returning to her neck to rub at the tender spot on the back. Perhaps she had slept on the pillow wrong. "You really don't owe me an apology. You're friends; you kept in touch. Sasuke and I didn't. That's all it really is."

Naruto nodded, even as a frown began to form on his face as his eyes travelled up her arm to the hand rubbing her neck. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

"What?" Sakura asked, confused.

"Shit, if he did, when he gets out here I'm going to –" Naruto was quickly morphing from awkward secret-keeper to looking mildly pissed off and Sakura shifted back a little further away from him on the deck, all the while eyeing him warily. What was he talking abo –

A sharp pain and then sudden darkness. Waking up in the guestroom bed and not remembering how she got there. Her bag not being up in the room with her. It suddenly made sense.

Sakura ground her teeth together and this time, it was Naruto's turn to warily shift away.

"Did. He knock. Me _out_?" She bit out angrily through her clenched teeth.

Naruto's blue eyes widened, as if realizing only then that that was a piece of information she hadn't initially remembered upon waking up. Sakura shot to her feet, not needing him to confirm what she already knew. She didn't even find it in herself to care or take note of the fact that Naruto was aware that Sasuke had knocked her out and wasn't in the process of freaking out alongside her.

Screw proving anything to Sasuke. She was going to _kick_ his _ass_.

Sakura stormed up the deck and flung open the sliding glass door. The frame shook with the force of her shove but neither her or Naruto paid it any attention as she stood in the doorway and seethed in the general direction of Sasuke, who stood topless and damp by the coffee maker on the kitchen counter.

If she'd been in the mood she'd been in several minutes earlier, she might've taken a good long moment to admire the man now that she wasn't in medic mode. He was topless, his abs were gloriously visible, his dark hair was mussed and damp and that may've been a water droplet on his clean shaven cheek, but all she could see was _red_.

Not giving him any time to prepare, Sakura launched herself across the kitchen and threw a punch at his jaw.

"What the fu –" He dropped his mug on the counter and ducked her slug, a look of surprise on his face. Not discouraged, Sakura spun around and kicked at him low, causing Sasuke to jump back. Sakura threw herself forward and jabbed her elbow at his abdomen, only to have him hook his arm beneath hers and yank her back up against his chest.

Struggling, Sakura thrust her other elbow back, only to have her one free arm meet the same fate as her other. She struggled and squirmed to break out of his hold, stamping her feet down in hopes of crushing his but still she couldn't land a hit on him and still he wouldn't let go.

Her breath caught in her throat and she finally stopped struggling, realizing that she couldn't break free. Sakura let her head fall forward, her long pink hair cascading around her head and shielding her face from his view.

"Are you finished?"

Sakura ground her teeth, desperate to keep it together. He _knocked_ her _out_. What kind of bullshit was that? He had her easily subdued in seconds even when she'd been kicking and screaming – she hadn't even had a chance. The satisfaction of landing a hit on him had been nothing but wishful thinking. What would have happened to her back at her house if Sasuke hadn't shown up to save her? She needed to trust him – this man she used to know but knew so little about. Her life seemed to depend upon it.

"How," she choked out between her clenched teeth, her body beginning to shake as her anger rush dissipated and her adrenaline was left with no outlet but through her fears, "am I supposed to trust you?"

"Hn?" He sounded indignantly confused, as if he was the one who should've been asking that question given that she'd just tried to attack him. She knew he couldn't be that oblivious to the cause of her anger.

"Goddammit, Sasuke!" Sakura shouted at the tile floor, her arms jerking in his hold, "How am I supposed to trust you when you knock me out when my back is turned?"

He said nothing, and Sakura raged on, completely powerless against him in everything but her voice.

"You're the only one who knows what's going on, you're the one who saved me and said 'do you trust me?' But I didn't and then I did because you're Sasuke, and I thought at some point in our lives we were _friends_." Oh Jesus. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to stop the water that was building up on the brims from falling. They were tears of anger, tears of _rage_, she convinced herself.

"You make me trust you and then you knock me out and what the fuck am I supposed to _do_, Sasuke? How am I supposed to trust you amidst all this craziness when you _do_ that?" He was the only rock she had, the only one who knew all the answers she needed. How could she count on him to watch her back when he didn't even care to communicate with her? When he just knocked her out because... because _why_?

"Why can't you just use your _words_, Sasuke?" Sakura whispered forcefully, not trusting her voice to not give away the emotions ripping through her, "Did you want me to be quiet? Did you not want me to be around? Why can't you just communicate that to me in a way that doesn't involve you knocking me out?"

That didn't involve him shredding up the tentative trust that existed there previously.

That didn't involve him dropping a rock in her chest and causing her to sink six feet under at the realization that after nine years he still didn't care and wasn't concerned about her feelings.

That didn't involve her ending up feeling like an idiot for thinking that Sasuke was still the man she'd thought she'd known years ago.

A tear slipped from her eye and ran down her cheek and Sakura wanted to scream at the injustice of it. Why did she have to _cry_? She was angry and trying to be strong but her body just wouldn't let her. The way Sasuke was gripping her, she was sure he could feel her body shaking. She might even wager that he could hear her heart pounding in her chest.

"Why do you have to be so broody?" Sakura laughed out, hoping he didn't notice her tears, "Why can't we just talk things out and –"

"Okay."

Okay? Okay _what_? Sakura blinked back the moisture in her eyes and tried to mentally backtrack. What was he okay-ing to? She'd been ranting and couldn't remember half of the things she had said because she was so _frustrated_.

"I'll tell you when you need to be quiet," he answered her quietly, his voice low in her ear, "when I want you to leave."

Sakura bit her lip, refraining from speaking.

"I'm sorry," he said, and just like that all the ice she'd submerged herself in began to melt away. She was weak, she knew, when it came to this stupid, infuriating man. He apologized and she was already preparing to trust him again because he was _Sasuke_ and she desperately, desperately wanted to.

"Okay," Sakura whispered softly, acknowledging his apology.

"If I let you go," he murmured against her ear after a moment of silence dragged on, "are you going to attack me again?"

Sakura's entire back felt as if it were on fire as she suddenly realized their proximity and his state of undress. In her fury, the closeness of his hold on her had only served to irritate her more, but now as she cooled down she felt as if there were an electric current snapping and crackling between them. Between his mouth and her ear and oh God.

Sakura shook her head, perhaps more violently than she had intended to, and just like that his arms slipped out from under hers and she stumbled forward, bracing her hands on the island counter in the middle of the room.

She sucked precious oxygen into her lungs as the burning sensation began to disappear from each part of her body that had been in contact with him. Sakura lifted a hand and brushed her hair back from her face, pushing it behind her and looking up, only to catch his gaze.

He was looking at her, his facial expression giving nothing away of what he was thinking but his eyes, so dark and deep, had yet to leave hers as she stared back at him. What was he thinking?

Realizing that that may be information she'd rather not know, Sakura tore her eyes away from him and slunk out of the kitchen and into the hallway where she grabbed her bag. Swiftly, Sakura escaped up the stairs and into her room.

-o0o-

He didn't know why he felt compelled to watch her go.

He also didn't know why he hadn't managed to stop looking at her when she brushed her hair back from her face after he released her from his hold. He didn't know what he'd expected to see when she looked up at him, but the quiet surprise and sadness hadn't been it.

He actually felt... somewhat guilty. Which was stupid, considering guilt was not a feeling he experienced. He never regretted his actions. Everything he did he did for a reason.

Perhaps he had been expecting her to be angry, her pretty face scrunched up and glaring at him. And maybe that, right _there_, was the problem. He still thought she was pretty, even when she was no longer sleeping and completely unaware of his staring.

Sasuke sighed and delved a hand into his messy, still damp locks. Goddamn.

Glancing at the doorway to the backyard, he noticed Naruto still standing there, staring where Sakura had previously been. The blond looked up and met his stare then, simply shaking his head.

"Well?" Naruto prompted, hinting towards the fact that Sakura was now awake, had expelled her wrath, and therefore it was Sasuke's turn to do as he had agreed.

He'd have to go upstairs and retrieve her if he was going to tell her about what was going on. Realizing that he probably would have to calm her down off of whatever irrational emotional train she was likely riding, he turned and poured a generous amount of coffee into his mug before gulping it down.

Caffeine; he needed that.

Setting the mug down on the counter, Sasuke exited the kitchen after several minutes and made his way up the stairs toward Sakura's room.

The door was ajar, but still he knocked once on the frame before stepping in and leaning in the doorway. What he saw surprised him.

Sakura's duffle bag was open on her bed, some contents strewn across the mattress. She was leaning over the desk by the door, pouring over a manila file folder with intense concentration.

She wasn't moping.

She wasn't in a fuming rage.

She was... working?

Sasuke's eyebrow shot up on its own accord as Sakura's eyes finished trailing across the page before she looked up at him and smiled pleasantly.

"What's up?"

It was stupid that he found himself unable to reply to that immediately. His mind was still adjusting to the fact that he'd considerably failed in predicting Sakura's current state of being. Finding it irrational to be caught up on that, Sasuke logged the thought away and moved on to what he'd found her for.

"Come downstairs," he said, crossing his arms across his chest as he adjusted his lean against the doorframe, "and I'll tell you about what's going on."

Ah. So at least he could still predict some of her reactions. Sakura slowly set the folder back down on the desk, her eyes wide with surprise.

Her mouth opened and closed a couple times, as if she were looking for the right words. After a moment, she finally nodded, opening up a drawer and slipping the file folder into its depths.

"Okay."

With that, Sasuke turned and left the room, expecting her to follow.

-o0o-

Sakura sat at the dining room table, fiddling with her mug of coffee, double double, in front of her. She couldn't decide whether she was glad or not that Sasuke had pulled on a black t-shirt before leading her into the kitchen to obtain some much needed caffeine.

On the one hand, she wasn't distracted. On the other...well, one had to mourn the loss.

She felt kind of twitchy, like a kid at Christmas who was trying to stealthily sneak under the tree and open presents without the parental units noticing. It seemed almost unreal that after all his evasive manoeuvres, he was just going to sit her down and fill her in.

And yet... that was exactly what was about to happen. She wasn't one for looking a gift horse in the mouth, and so she wisely chose not to comment on his sudden change of heart.

Sasuke was leaning against the wall across the table from her, a steaming mug of coffee in hand. He seemed surprised earlier when he hadn't found her an emotional wreck in her room, but had since gotten over it. She felt kind of smug about it, even still. It was that or feel irritated that he would assume that her fleeing the kitchen was because she needed somewhere to break down, privately.

As opposed to her fleeing because she was having a hard time dealing with the sudden inexplicable electricity she felt in the room and her own rampaging thoughts and okay, he could think whatever he wanted.

He was looking at her expectantly now, and Sakura concentrated her attention on him.

"I'm going to say this once," he started, "so listen carefully. And do not, under any circumstances, tell any of the information I am about to disclose to you to anyone. Are we clear?"

Sakura resisted the urge to be snarky and inform him that it wasn't exactly like there was anyone around she could divulge information to, but she refrained. On account of the fact that she really really wanted to know what he was about to say.

Instead, she nodded, and said, "Yes. Got it."

"I work for a branch of a government organization called T:7," he began, and Sakura felt goosebumps forming on her arms and the back of her neck, "that has unique specializations. Currently I'm looking into a particularly dangerous group of people, suspected of plotting particularly dangerous things. We don't really know who, and we don't really know what."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as he thought about what he was saying, "But I'm going to find out. It's recently come to their attention that they're being investigated, by me," he continued and Sakura gulped, knowing where this was going, "after my stint at that warehouse in Konoha, and they don't like that. Which is why they want you, so they can know more about me and how much I know."

Sakura nervously tucked a long pink strand of hair behind her ear.

A few minutes quietly passed and he looked as if he wasn't going to tell her anything more, so she figured it was her turn to start tentatively asking questions.

"You work for a... government organization? But the other day you said no to that..." She trailed off, unsure as to how to word her question. She was actually quite relieved, given the multitude of other, less...good things he could've been doing or people he could've been working for. Or problems he could've been in. In retrospect, she probably should have picked up on this earlier.

"It's not a well-known organization," he answered, and Sakura had to agree. She'd never heard of T:7 before. Perhaps while she was researching for her patient she'd take a look into T:7, too.

"Don't bother looking for it," Sasuke cut into her train of thought, making her incredibly uncomfortable with the amount of mind reading that had been occurring, "it doesn't exist."

Oh, God. Wasn't that the worst kind of government organization? The secret kind. Anxious, Sakura asked the last huge question she had on her mind. Everything else could wait.

"You mentioned T:7 has different specializations. What's the nature of this investigation?"

Sasuke's dark eyes lifted from his coffee mug and focused again on her, "Counterterrorism."

"See this?" Sakura pointed to herself, even as her heart palpitated violently in her chest, "this is me not freaking out."

* * *

><p><strong>(AN) I don't know why I wrote that dream sequence at the beginning – it just kind of happened because I didn't know how to start the chapter ^_^' I'm amused by dreams that make no sense. (Mountain Rain is my laundry detergent scene XD) I also don't know why this chapter was so hard to write. =S My apologies for the lateness!<strong>

**I scrambled to write this during breaks in the chaos of preparing, organizing and packing up to leave on vacation. As such, I'm not entirely pleased with this chapter. I sincerely hope it's not too much of a disappointment :-/ Good news, though! I'm bringing my laptop with me and I have high hopes that while I'm in a cabin by the beach writing inspiration will come and there will be some awesome updates when I return! I've got a SasuSaku oneshot brewing in my head and I figure I'll get that written while I'm gone =) (as will the next chapter of this story, of course.)**

**A couple final points:**

**1. Yes, I did stand in my room punching and kicking to see if that kitchen scene was plausible.**

**2. Terrorists are scary. Sasuke is scary. Sakura is trying to not be scared. This could get interesting.**

**3. Does it seem like there's some weird high school tension still in existence? Kindof. **

**4. There will be more clarity in future chapters. Sasuke doesn't have a lot to say right now because he doesn't know too much himself. (I'm also in a huge screaming rush to finish this before I lose my internet connection for weeks)**

**5. Next chapter is called "Cabin Fever" in which Sakura and Sasuke deal with being stuck around each other with Naruto in the middle and I really wanted to get it out this week, but I've run out of time. =( **

**Thanks for reading! Please share with me your thoughts on the story if you have the time =) **

**~dancer-me**


	7. Cabin Fever

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter VII: Cabin Fever**

**(AN) Sorry for the year long wait for an update guys. University does that to me. See the AN at the end for a comment on the concept of terrorism in this story. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**

* * *

><p>She was still doing her best in the 'not-freaking-out' department, but it required quite a bit of work. Without her high pressure job at the hospital to keep her distracted, Sakura had way too much time on her hands with which to dwell on things.<p>

And she had way too many things on her mind that she didn't want to dwell on. For instance, she didn't want to dwell on the fact that potential terrorists wanted to nab her in order to wean non-existent information out of her about Sasuke and his operation.

On the occasion that she'd found time to hang out with Tenten and Ino at Tenten's house and watched action movies, Sakura had always been a somewhat strong advocate of the sidekick divulging _some_ details about the good guys in order to save his fingernails.

Or his fingers.

Or his life, period.

After all, wasn't self-preservation everyone's main concern? But here she was without any real information to cough up at all, any way to save her fingernails, and she had never been all that great a liar. If she were ever to get caught, she might as well begin mourning the loss of her fingers and her career as a surgeon right now.

Furthermore, Sasuke's involvement in the whole ordeal was complicating matters and causing her to re-evaluate her stance on the whole information sharing deal. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if anything she said to save herself caused Sasuke to be injured or worse, killed. Guilty conscious and that weird feeling in her stomach aside, she was beginning to understand why the sidekick in the movies did what he did.

Because, realistically speaking, her fingernails remaining attached to her fingers didn't seem a worthy exchange for letting terrorists have their way with the rest of the world and for selling out Sasuke. And, in the grand scheme of things, the bad guys always killed the good guy they captured anyway. Well, they killed the accountant first, but _then_ they killed the sidekick.

And while Sakura didn't think that Sasuke thought of her as his sidekick in any way, shape, or form, she still felt inclined to keep her promise and not breathe a word about anything he had told her to anyone, be her fingers in jeopardy or not. If what Sasuke told her was true, and she was definitely inclined to believe that he wasn't lying to her, his investigation was serious and not something she wanted to fuck up for him. After all, she'd already concluded, and Sasuke had previously confirmed back in the motel, that the bad guys would kill her anyway.

Having resigned herself to _that_ nasty tidbit of information, Sakura was struggling to find something to immerse herself in that would prove a worthy distraction from the chaos in her mind. Initially, she'd reverted to thinking about all the _other _things she didn't want to dwell on, such as the awkward situation she had going on with Sasuke and that strange tension that had appeared between them in Naruto's kitchen yesterday.

She didn't want to dwell on the conversation she'd had with Naruto that day, either, wherein he revealed that Sasuke deliberately hadn't wanted her to know about his existence. Why that was she still didn't know, but thinking about it wasn't going to make the answer magically appear in her head.

Desperate for a distraction she could actually apply herself to, Sakura dug in her desk drawer and removed the manila file folder containing information on the patient from her consultation. She'd only looked at it briefly over the past two days, having opted to spend her first day of free time catching up with Naruto.

Cracking open the file, Sakura leaned back against the headboard of her bed, wiggled into the pillow behind her, and read through the document for the second time since she had taken it from the hospital.

The patient in question was middle-aged and had an illness she had never encountered before. She had seen and treated quite a few degenerative diseases throughout her medical practices, but this was of a variety she had never seen before. The disease seemed to be causing his cells to attack each other, resulting in gradual lack of function in the affected limbs accompanied by extreme pain.

Sakura frowned as she flipped through a few papers to stare at the man's medical documents. When she had spoken to him during the consultation, she wouldn't have guessed that he was in extreme pain, but from what she knew of his ailment she knew he had to be. Scanning through his prescription history, Sakura couldn't find any intense painkillers prescribed to him within the last few years. What did that mean?

Some people had incredibly high pain tolerances, that she knew for certain, but not showing signs of being affected by one's body attacking itself? There had to be something weird going on there. Sakura gently rubbed her temple and flipped the folder back to the first page.

She needed to find out more about this disease. For one, she needed to know if it was going continue to spread throughout his body until he eventually lost all motor function and, finally, his life. If she could figure out what was causing it, perhaps a lesion or a malformation of tissue or maybe even a tumour, she could surgically remove or alter the affected organ and hopefully cure the man of his painful disease.

On the other hand, she could attempt stepping out of her surgical field and seeing what she could do in the way of developing an antidote that would reverse the effects and kill the disease. It wasn't impossible that a virus could be causing her patient's body to self-destruct, but it would be a virus never before seen by the medical community. From what she'd seen so far, if the disease _was_ caused by a virus, it was a particularly vicious one.

Sakura looked down at his medical records and felt exhausted. All of the possibilities rushing through her head for what could be wrong with her patient would have come with signs. Any doctor worth their salt would have picked up on malformations or dying tissue within his body, but from what she could see on his records, there was no sign of anything being short of perfect. She was left to assume that his bodily degeneration was a recent development, but the very thought bothered her. Practically speaking, it just didn't make any sense.

She would have to borrow Naruto's computer and do some research on the symptoms and see what else she could dig up on the strange disease afflicting her patient. Hopefully there was more information out there to be had – if there wasn't, her patient, and subsequently her, would be in a whole new ballpark of problems.

Closing the folder and dropping it down on her blankets, Sakura stood from the bed and stretched her arms above her head, working out the kinks in her shoulders and her back. Rolling her shoulders, Sakura brushed a hand through her pink hair and padded out of her room.

Coffee. There was a large chance she'd start feeling more optimistic about this medical case if she had coffee. Sakura made her way down the stairs and breezed toward the kitchen, her eyes locked onto the general location of the gurgling coffee maker.

"-nothing came up. I'm guessing they're not big players."

Sakura slowed her pace as she entered the kitchen, hearing Naruto's voice carry from inside the room, next to the island. What about big players? Sakura would have had to fight the temptation to eavesdrop had she been stealthier in her approach but, as it was, silence had not been at the forefront of her mind and her pausing to listen now would be extremely obvious.

Coffee _coffee_ coffee.

"Hn."

Sakura tensed, her grip tightening around the handle of the coffee pot as Sasuke's voice seemed to fill the room around her.

"But you already knew that. _Fuck_, Sasuke, if you already know something don't make me waste my time!"

"I didn't already know that. I merely considered it."

Sakura could just _feel_ the frustration rolling off of Naruto in blankets as she pictured him throwing his hands up above his head in exasperation at Sasuke's remark. She'd have turned around to look, because the image would likely have brought her back to their high school years wherein this sort of interaction was not uncommon, but...

Coffee _coffee _coffee.

Sakura pulled a substantial sized mug out of the cupboard – attempting to ignore the sheer disorganization of Naruto's mug stacking system while she was at it – and placed it on the counter in front of her.

The orange ceramic mug was a little gaudy, but she had to smile at the real love affair Naruto had going on with that colour. Trying to be invisible in some weird hope that the boys would continue their conversation as if she weren't there, Sakura quietly filled her mug with coffee, placing the pot back on the burner and mixing some sugar with the dark liquid.

"Whatever," Naruto growled, "I'm out. I've got other shit to do." Sakura heard Naruto's clothes rustle as he walked around the island and came alongside her at the counter. Looking up through her bangs, Sakura smiled sweetly at Naruto, the same way she always used to back in high school when he and Sasuke would argue.

Grinning back at her, Naruto glanced down at her giant orange mug and in one swift motion, snatched it from her fingers and slid it across the countertop, bringing it to a stop in front of him.

"For me? You shouldn't have," Naruto teased, even as he brought the mug to his lips and took a generous gulp.

"Hey!" Sakura exclaimed part playfully, part legitimately annoyed as she punched the blonde's chest with enough force to make him choke a bit on the hot coffee. She smiled with satisfaction as he none too gently slammed the mug down on the counter and dramatically braced himself against the cool marble top, hacking and coughing.

"That was _my _coffee," she chastised smugly, displaying no remorse for the blonde's state. She wasn't truly mad but she _was _disappointed. That _had _been her coffee and that orange monstrosity _was_ the biggest mug in the cupboard.

Resigned, Sakura turned away from Naruto and perused the cupboard once more, selecting this time a plain white mug from the back of the haphazard porcelain stacks and set it down on the counter, trying not to be disappointed by its significantly smaller size.

Finally noticing that he was going to receive no sympathy from her, Naruto coughed dramatically one last time before picking up his – _stolen – _mug, harrumphing at the room, and stalking off and down a hall. There was the sound of a door closing behind him, presumably the one to his study, where he presumably actually accomplished whatever work he had. Sakura was still suspicious that all he did was watch re-runs of old shows starring Yukie Fujikaze online.

Sakura was busy contemplating whether it was worth it to brave the potential horrors of Naruto's search history in order to find evidence to support her suspicions when the sound of fingers lightly but swiftly tapping across a keyboard brought her mind back to the presents.

She was alone in the kitchen with Sasuke.

Sakura tightened her grip around the handle of her hot mug, remembering what transpired the last time they were alone in this kitchen together. Or, really, _any_ kitchen together. With a slight shiver, Sakura remembered Sasuke shoving her up against the doorframe of her own kitchen, thrusting his leg between hers and - somehow they just always ended up in each other's personal space, was the point.

Taking a sip of her coffee, Sakura let the warm liquid trickle through her and willed it to do away with the shiver Sasuke's presence had sent down her spine. It wasn't an unpleasant shiver in any way – in fact, it was a feeling she hadn't experienced in a long time, but it was unwelcome.

Sakura turned and leaned her back against the counter, sneaking a glance at Sasuke as she pretended to be entranced by the small bubbles coming and going on her coffee. He looked good; like he had actually had a decent sleep and woke up on the right side of the bed. He was wearing a white collared shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his forearms resting on the countertop. His dark eyes were staring emotionlessly at his computer screen as his fingers began dancing across the keyboard, giving nothing away as to what he was thinking, or if he even noticed her glance. She didn't care... much.

Any feelings or connection she had felt between her and Sasuke had expired many years ago. It had all been in her head, and his desire to keep his presence unknown to her after high school graduation was proof of that. Seeing him now, after so much time, and under the unique circumstances, had just blown the dust off a box of old memories and wants. The dust would settle soon and the feelings would disappear, and the anticipatory shiver his presence brought to her would disappear along with it.

At least she hoped that would be the case, because she didn't know if she could manage having to go through another five or six years of trying to forget about him; another decade of having very short relationships, if any, because no man she met was what she really wanted.

Because none of them were Sasuke.

Sakura snorted inwardly and swirled her cup around, watching new bubbles form. Sasuke wasn't even _that_ great – he hardly spoke to her, and when he did, it wasn't to whisper sweet nothings in her ear. It was to give her orders, or chastise her and yeah, _that_ was attractive. So why, _why_, was she, so many years down the line, still attracted to him? Still fascinated by him? Still wanting to be just his friend if that was the best she could do?

That had been her MO back in high school as well – to simply be his friend; be someone he could lean on and talk to and trust. Yeah, she'd hoped somewhere deep down inside that maybe one day he'd come to like her as more than just a friend, but she hadn't needed that. She had been his friend and that was good enough for her.

Sakura snorted once more. Fat lot of good that 'friendship' had done for her. Nine years of nothing and then home invasions. It was a real friendship turned romance. Clearly, that whole friendship thing had been one sided. He had saved her first and foremost to protect whatever information she may have on him, not because he didn't want her to get hurt. That had probably been an after-thought.

A sardonic smirk crossed her face before it was replaced by a look of surprise as she noticed Sasuke's center of focus had changed. He was no longer staring at his computer screen, but instead had settled his dark onyx eyes on her.

Gulping, she wondered if perhaps that last snort had been out loud.

It definitely had.

Tossing her hair over her shoulder with as much subtle dignity as she could muster, Sakura took the necessary few steps forward in order to bring herself to the bar stool adjacent to where Sasuke sat. Pretending that she hadn't just been standing there for God knows how long brooding about her ex-friendship with this man, Sakura took a seat and placed her mug on the counter.

Propping her elbow on the counter and resting her chin on her palm, Sakura levelled her gaze on Sasuke. At least with Naruto out of the room and huddled away in his office, probably looking busy while he watched videos online, she had an opening to discuss yesterday's surprising new pieces of information that she had promised to keep secret.

They hadn't really spoken since he told her that he worked for a secret organization that specialized in counter-terrorism, and she had been trying her best not to dwell on what exactly that meant. What did he do? What danger was he facing? There were lots of different types of dangers 'counter-terrorism' encompassed. The only constant was the fact that everything about it seemed life-threatening.

Sasuke could have been dead for these past nine years and she never would have known. Sakura gulped and tried to hide the chill she felt inside her stomach from Sasuke while she pushed a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. He wasn't dead, Sakura told herself to make the sinking feeling dissipate – he was very much alive, and still staring at her.

Sakura forced herself to rein in her rambling thoughts by thinking less about what-ifs and nine years ago and more about the events of the last few days, when so much had changed.

"Can you tell me more about what you do?" Sakura questioned gently, her voice breaking the silence that had filled the kitchen after Naruto's exit. She wasn't even daring to dream that he would bestow any specifics upon her whatsoever, but she was hoping to learn more about what was going on and how her involvement affected the grand scheme of things. He could tell her that much, couldn't he?

"Counter-terrorism covers a broad spectrum of things, right?" Sakura continued, hoping to somehow trigger his participation, "Are we talking about a group that just wants to scare people? Groups with a political agenda? People that are just in it for the destruction or –"

"They have an agenda," Sasuke interjected, and Sakura shut-up immediately, holding her breath and hoping he would continue. Heck, maybe he'd continue simply because he hoped he could talk her into asphyxiating herself and then she wouldn't be his problem anymore.

God, that was dark.

"I don't know what it is," he continued, dragging his eyes back to his computer screen, "but they've had a very sophisticated way of going about their business." Looking back at her, he finished, "at least until the night they went for you."

Sakura thought back to the night she had thought Sasuke had lost his mind and was trying to rob her. Thought back to the three men sprawled on the floor of her home.

"The policeman had his ID on him," Sakura volunteered thoughtfully. She'd seen enough mafia movies to know that when a boss sent his lackeys to do his work for him, he sent them as blank slates, not name plates that might as well have been bedazzled with sequins and a neon sign explaining their presence.

Sasuke gave a curt nod.

"It was sloppy," he said, "a rushed job. They wanted to get to you before I did."

"But they didn't," Sakura couldn't help the small smile that crossed her lips, having realized quickly enough how grateful she was that that was the case.

"No, they didn't." Was there a pinch of smug satisfaction in his voice? She couldn't quite tell.

"And now you're stuck with me," Sakura said after a few minutes of silence. When Sasuke didn't say anything, she continued, "How does that affect your investigation?"

Again, Sasuke remained quiet for several minutes, his eyes darting back and forth the only motion he exhibited as he read whatever was on his screen. Finally, after what felt like forever, Sasuke surprised her by reaching out and closing his laptop and giving her what appeared to be his full attention.

"It complicates things," he told her, his voice deep and steady, "but I can still do my job."

His words relieved her, and Sakura felt less like a ball and chain shackled around him than she had since he'd saved her.

"Sakura," Sasuke's voice addressing her, saying her name, put that shiver right back into her spine. Focusing on him, she could see that he wanted to make sure that _he_ had _her_ full attention.

"The less you know the better," he said after a moment, "it's safer that way. For both of us."

While she was disappointed she wasn't going to learn any more, she already had known that this would be the case. Instead of feeling angry that he wasn't filling her in, like she had been back at the motel, she felt strangely happy – probably because his words had sounded almost gentle.

"Okay," she agreed, looking back at him and smiling, "but on one condition."

He raised a dark eyebrow at that.

"There are no conditions. This is non-negotiable."

Sakura sighed, mildly annoyed. "Just hear me out, okay? My condition is that, if I can help in anyway, you let me." Seeing that he wasn't looking too sold on the matter, she continued, "I'm a skilled surgeon, I know a lot of people, and you're stuck with me anyway, right? So use me."

After the last few words had left her mouth, Sakura tried her best not to ruminate on what possible needs he might have a use for her for. Blushing and trying to hide it by taking a drink of her somewhat forgotten coffee, Sakura cast her glance anywhere but at him.

"Okay," he finally agreed, and Sakura felt muscles relax inside her that she hadn't even known she'd been tensing. It felt surprisingly good to hear him agree with her and accept her potential help.

Not wanting to give him enough time to retract his statement, Sakura barrelled on with the first question that came out of her mouth, without letting it pass through her thought filters.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

-o0o-

"Have you?" Sasuke shot back.

The startled look that appeared in her green eyes was exactly what he had been hoping to incite. What kind of question was that, anyway? Having stunned her into silence, Sasuke moved to reopen his laptop and continue his work.

Somewhere, in the vast databases that T:7 kept, there had to be some knowledge of that pin he found in the Suit's pocket. He had surprised himself somewhat by putting off his research to talk to her, but he justified it by knowing that he wouldn't have been able to get any work done at all if she had just continued talking at him.

For whatever reason, he was having increasing difficulty turning her into white noise. It was like goddamn high school all over again, when her voice was the only female voice he heard. When her words were the ones that fought to pull him out of his thoughts. It was aggravating as fuck. A few days ago in his car he had managed to tune her out, but he was now feeling far less proficient at the task than he liked.

"I guess I have, yeah."

Sakura's soft voiced admission caused him to stop trying to open his computer and instead he rested the palm of his hand on the cool, chrome-like lid.

"What?"

"I have killed someone before," she explained, a sad look flashing across her face as she glanced down at her plain white mug and back up at him. "It wasn't intentional, by any means," she continued, her eyes looking at him but not really seeing him, clearly off in a memory, "but it was my job to save his life and I didn't know how. He died on my table."

It took him a moment of wading through weird feelings of surprise before he remembered that she was a surgeon, and experienced the fine line between life and death everyday just as much, if not more, than he did.

He didn't know why, but he felt inclined to reply.

"That's not your fault," he heard himself say. It was truly unnecessary commentary to begin with and he wasn't one for meaningless chatter, so why was he bothering? "You're a surgeon. You can't save everyone who cheats death."

Sakura looked at him and this time, he could see that she was actually looking at him and not through him.

"You're right," she conceded, "but I wish I could save everybody. I try to know how to do everything, but..."

"Wishing is useless," he said bluntly, "it solves nothing. Just do what you have to do."

Sakura laughed a quick exhale of breath as she shook her head, a small smile on her lips. "I wish wishing wasn't so useless with my current patient."

His eyebrow went up at this, and he remembered that his wasn't the only job that got derailed by unexpected company. He didn't let himself feel bad – whoever she was working with could wait until his task was finished. He couldn't afford to let her go back to work too soon and jeopardise his operation.

He didn't inquire further, but she clearly felt the need to elucidate.

"He has this crazy medical condition I have never seen before in my life," she explained, "it's like his body is self-destructing, but I can't find evidence of how or why in any of his medical files. If I could just get a hold of some information, _anything_, that could give me a better idea of what disease he's facing, I _know_ I could do something for him."

Sasuke didn't bother to pry at whether she was speaking as a medical professional, or as someone who felt the need to make up for the life she had lost. Still... he respected her. He made a mental note to do a little research into Sakura Haruno later on and see just what exactly she had made of her life after high school. She had offered herself as an asset, after all, and if he ran into enough of a road block to actually merit her help, it would behoove him to know her background.

Remarkably, they sat in silence for several minutes before she stood, bringing her mug over to Naruto's sink and washing it out, before placing it upside down on the drainer.

"Well, I'll leave you to your work," she said then, turning back to face him. She was smiling at him, and he was momentarily distracted by her volunteering to leave him alone. And momentarily bothered by how he would describe her smile as pretty, and by his actually wondering if her hair was as soft as it looked as she brushed it back from her shoulders with her hands.

Goddamn. What was wrong with him? He needed to say something to make her stop smiling like that.

"I have."

"What?" Sakura tilted her just slightly, a confused look on her face.

"I have killed." He didn't bother to say how many. He didn't need to. The smile had left her face and instead she looked a mixture of sad, worried, and surprised.

For some reason, he didn't like this expression anymore than her previous one. In fact, he liked it less.

"Oh," she said softly, and he expected that to be the end of it. But instead, she added, "Just... whatever you do Sasuke? Be careful. Please."

And with that, she padded out of the room and left him sitting alone, just as he normally preferred. He brushed his hand through his thick dark hair and lifted the lid of his laptop. He stared at the words on his screen but didn't read any of them. Why wasn't he feeling relieved by her absence?

Sasuke sighed, frustrated. Ever since she'd pathetically tried to assault him in the kitchen, she'd been more of a distraction to him than he liked. It was disturbing that he found himself wishing that she'd just go back to annoying him, so he could go back to thinking of her as nothing but a hindrance.

-o0o-

It had been a week since Sasuke showed up on his doorstep with Sakura, knocked her out, and sprung his news on Naruto. As Naruto stared in horror at his ramen cabinet, he acknowledged that that week was six days too long for Sakura to be sitting around with nothing to do.

"I'll be back late," Sasuke's voice punched through Naruto's horrified thoughts as the man brushed past him on his way to the front door.

Swiftly, Naruto shot out his arm and, with a grip strong enough to get Sasuke's surprised attention, pulled him back to him.

"The fuck, Naruto?" Sasuke growled, trying to yank his arm out of the blonde's grasp. But Naruto would not budge.

"Take her with you," Naruto begged, focusing his pleading blue eyes on Sasuke's pissed off dark ones.

"No."

"Pl_eeeeeeeeea_se take her with you!" Naruto begged harder and louder, as if that would change Sasuke's mind. "She's going _insane_."

Sasuke's eyebrows rose at this, and Naruto took it as an opportunity to plead his case. Lowering his voice so as to avoid being overheard by the pink haired demon that was no doubt roaming his upstairs this very instant looking for something to reorganize, Naruto hissed his dilemma at his impatient T:7 partner.

"She's reorganizing _everything_! Look, would you just _look_at my ramen cabinet? There's no ramen! I have no idea where the hell anything is anymore. And my mugs – she rearranged them by size. She alphabetized my DVD's, comic books, magazines!"

Naruto dragged Sasuke behind him as he bustled over to his linen closet.

"She _colour coded_ my _towels_." Naruto said ominously, finding it truly terrifying, "AND she did my laundry. She folded my underwear, Sasuke."

"You've got to take her out with you. She's losing her mind cooped up in here and _I'm_ losing all my shit. I can't find anything! She's always busy with work, always. Being stuck in my house with nothing to do is driving her _and_ me crazy."

Sasuke sighed in frustration, finally succeeding in jerking his arm out of Naruto's grasp.

"I can't take her with me, idiot," he hissed back, at least having the courtesy to also avoid attracting the pink haired demon's attention, "I'm going out to the club to meet a contact. I'd be dragging her into exactly the thing I brought her here to avoid."

"It's a _club_ for fuck's sakes, Sasuke!" Naruto countered, desperate to succeed in his plea. "There are tons of people there, and she'll blend in with the crowd. No one's going to take a shot at her there."

Sasuke scoffed at his 'blend in' comment, and Naruto tried and failed to ignore the fact that Sakura's pink hair was somewhat of a novelty.

"It'll be dark, anyways..." Naruto mumbled.

"No."

"Well, _fine_." Naruto harrumphed, folding his arms in front of him, "we'll just see how _you_ feel when she finishes with my shit and moves on to digging through _yours_."

At that, Naruto knew he had won. Sasuke didn't like anyone touching his stuff, _ever, _and they both knew Sakura well enough to know that in her pursuit for organisation, she'd find a way to get past whatever obstacles Sasuke created.

"Fine," Sasuke growled, "tell her she has ten minutes to get down here or I'm leaving without her."

"Yes!" Naruto shouted, punching his arm up in the air in victory. Grinning widely at Sasuke, Naruto slapped his best bud on the shoulder before dashing upstairs to tell Sakura that she could have a night out.

* * *

><p><strong>(AN) I want to address a concern of one of my reviewers for the last chapter. With respect to my concept of bringing terrorism into this story, I'm going with the idea of terrorism being "the use of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims." I don't know whether that will alleviate any concerns or exacerbate them, but I just want to get that out there. The only thing I may be iffy with is the political aims as opposed to other aims, but then again, perhaps not. <strong>

**That said: I hope Sasuke and Naruto working for a CT organization didn't ruin the story for anyone. That was my goal with them since this plot popped into my head one night. I thought, "Man, wouldn't they be such badass secret agents? It'd be like... good cop, bad cop, except way more epic." At least IMO. Whether I manage to write them that way is yet to be determined. **

**I drove into a writing rut around the coffee in the kitchen scene – it's unfortunate but true and hopefully not terribly obvious before now. Sorry for the long wait! You'd think that having the majority of this story outlined would do better to combat writers block. (Instead, I ended up tying the drawstrings of my sweats to my desk so I wouldn't get up and wander away when I couldn't find the right words ^_^')**

**Also, please bear in mind that I am a university student pursuing an honours degree and am a teaching assistant. I love to write, and this story is near and dear to my heart, so all I ask is for you to be patient in waiting for updates. This story WILL be updated and WILL be finished.**

**Thanks a bunch for reading all that! If you could, do me oooooone more favour and leave me a review? Please and thank you! ^_^**

**~dancer-me**


	8. Too Hot, Too Crowded

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter VIII: Too Hot, Too Crowded  
>(Too Jam Packed with Sexual Tension)<strong>

**(AN) Thanks a bunch to my readers, and extra thanks to those of you that review! I make sure to read every review – I get great pleasure and inspiration to continue writing out of reading that you guys are enjoying my story, and I put great consideration into any constructive criticism I receive. Please R&R and enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Sakura had not packed to go clubbing.<p>

In fact, looking at the rumpled pile of clothes strewn across her bed, it appeared she had packed to relive the last month of her life, instead. Sighing, she accepted that this is what she got for packing the first things she could see, which happened to be the most recently worn and cleaned clothes that she'd hung up in her closet only a week ago.

She would have had to have gone back approximately six months, four days, and roughly three hours to find something she wore clubbing.

To be fair, when she had been packing to leave with Sasuke, clubbing had been nowhere near the top of her mental list of things she expected to be doing on this... adventure. In fact, Sakura pondered as she pulled a pair of slim jeans out of the jumble on her bed, it had been very close to the bottom of her list. There had been a higher probability that she would contract some sort of strange, tropical disease first.

Or be shot, dead. For no good reason at all.

Naruto had rushed upstairs only minutes ago to tell her that Sasuke was going out to a club and would take her with him so she could get a break from being cooped up in this house. _Yeah_, right. She knew Naruto was a bit frazzled by her need to adjust his clearly flawed organizational system. There was only _so_ much time she could spend poring over that manila file and researching before he eyes and mind started to beg for mercy.

Ten to one Sasuke had lost a coin toss or an arm wrestling match and was getting shackled with her. Because, and she was absolutely certain of this, Sasuke didn't want to go to a club. He probably was meeting someone to discuss something of possibly grand and imminent importance, and didn't want her to complicate it in any way.

_God_, what kind of contact wanted to meet at a club, anyway? Sakura huffed as she dug around in her pile of clothes, searching for the jade green shirt that went with her selected pair of pants from her last date with Takano. She had dressed up all cute for coffee and a movie and he had _stood_ her _up_. Sakura eyed the scoop neck of the shirt and the v-dip in the middle; it was one of the most sensual shirts she owned, and it had been wasted on the fool.

"Well, might as well get some use out of it now," Sakura muttered to no one as she slipped out of her sweatpants and loose t-shirt and into her jeans and sleeveless green top. Looking around, Sakura pilfered a dark brown belt from one of her other pairs of jeans and looped it around her hips, securing the buckle in front.

With her clothes now covered, Sakura went back to bemoaning that she had not packed to go clubbing and the cruel irony of the fact that it was somewhere _Sasuke_, of all people, needed to be. Was there a bartender there who collected all the local gossip? Was Sasuke going to go into some shady chamber, the door made of strings of plastic jewels and sequins that swooshed as he entered, and go talk to an extremely rotund foreigner surrounded by men in black or men wearing tropical flavoured shirts?

...Perhaps she had seen too many movies full of stereotypes. Maybe, Sasuke just wanted to dance and eavesdrop... people tended to yell in clubs, anyway, right? Sakura shook her head at the image of Sasuke dancing in a club – it just did _not_ look right. Try as she might, the image just would not form.

The pink haired surgeon looked forlornly at her shoe selection. She had a meager pair of worn black flats and her running shoes to pick from. As if she could wear the later; she'd stick out like a sore thumb and blow Sasuke's cover for all she knew, going into a club with him and looking like she was fully prepared to book it at any second.

"Hey, S_aaa_kura, is everything okay in there?" Naruto's dampened voice came through her closed door, "That bastard's going to – oh you know it's true, Sasuke, don't scowl like that if you know it's true – leave without you if you aren't downstairs soon and you're gonna miss your night out!"

Sakura sighed and ran her fingers through her hair as she padded over to the door and opened it to her blond friend. He was leaning against the hallway wall across from her door, looking only slightly anxious to get her out the door and to her _fun_.

His face brightened up at the sight of her and all anxiety seemed to be temporarily forgotten.

"S_aaa_kura, you look _damn _fine!" The blond cooed at her, his eyes roaming up and down her figure in the over the top and flirtatious way that was so trademark Naruto. When his eyes settled on her bare feet, Sakura slumped against the door frame dramatically and heaved a heavy sigh.

"I don't have shoes for this," she admitted dejectedly, thinking longingly of her fully shoe loaded bedroom back home that was still decorated in her fancy footwear from her assault on Sasuke. It was stupid that she was so hung up on such a small detail; a detail Sasuke would never even take notice of unless she was wielding it as a weapon. But still, she wanted to look good, and she did not want to dwell too long on what that actually meant.

Naruto looked pensive for half a second before he straightened up and flashed a 1000 watt grin at her.

"I have an idea! Come with me," Naruto said cheerfully, reaching back and wrapping his large hand around her wrist and pulling her behind him, paying little attention to the confused and slightly murderous looks she was sending his way. She did not like being _dragged. _Dragging was a Sasuke thing to do.

Sakura followed him into his vibrantly orange room and over to his closet. He had deep brown sliding wood doors that were coated in a varnish that made the doors look glossy and cool and she just wanted to... hug them.

As she was considering whether Naruto brought her here just so he could cheer her up with his pretty closet, Naruto slid open one of the doors and riffled around for a bit, before pulling out a lidded box of a rather substantial size.

Curiously, Sakura watched as Naruto carried the box over to his bed and set it down atop his blankets. Ruffling the back of his hair, her friend looked at her surprisingly bashfully, as if he wasn't quite sure what to say.

Sakura slowly approached the box and, casting one last wary glance at Naruto's slightly pink tinged cheeks, she lifted the lid off the box.

She stared agape into a box full of beautiful and gently worn shoes.

"They're, um, Hinata's," Naruto said with a small smile playing on his lips, "she left them here a while back because she couldn't take them with her while she travelled, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you borrowed some."

Sakura was already admiring a gorgeous black 2-inch heel, but stopped to stare at Naruto as his words finally made it to her brain.

"You and Hinata are seeing each other...?" Sakura gasped, a combination of surprise and glee. Thank you Hinata! She would have to give the dark haired beauty free reign of her own shoe closet the next time she had her friend over as thanks for this footwear rescue. Provided she ever had a next time.

Naruto smiled shyly again, bouncing back on his heels and playing with the carpet with his toes.

"For awhile, yeah," the blond admitted, "we see each other whenever we're in the same country. Which isn't all that often, y'know, but it's great when we are."

"I had no idea!" Sakura clapped her hands together, delighted. Smiling fondly at Naruto, she said, "You two are so good for each other. I'm just surprised I didn't hear about it before now."

Naruto winced slightly, "We hardly get the time to see each other these days, so we didn't want anyone to make a big deal out of it. I'm sorry I didn't say anything to you, though."

Sakura shook her head, pulling one of her best friends in the whole world in for a hug. It was obvious the blond was still feeling bad about her reaction to finding out he hadn't told her that he and Sasuke were keeping in touch.

"You _absolutely _don't need to apologize. Hinata didn't say anything either and I totally understand." Sakura pouted, looking up into Naruto's blue eyes in disappointment. "I didn't know your work had you travelling so much as well, though..."

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck as he smiled down at her and said, "You'd be surprised what my work calls for at times."

Sakura scrunched up her nose as she stepped away from Naruto and found the matching pair to the black heel. "I'll bet, ick." All that ramen. _So_ much ramen. Did he know how bad that was for his heart?

"At least I don't have to cut into people on a daily basis," Naruto joked, giving her a shove out of his bedroom door now that she had her shoes in hand. "Now go catch that jerk before he leaves without you!"

Sakura slipped on her shoes and descended the stairs, slightly relieved to find Sasuke standing there, still waiting for her. He looked... God, it was so not fair that a man could look that good. Dressed in dark pants and a black dress shirt with the top few buttons left undone, the man was either woefully unaware of his sexuality or purposefully trying to appease every woman in existence.

Was he trying to seduce whoever he was meeting? Or, like her, was he just trying to blend in with the crowd? Maybe it was just her, but it would have to be a pitch black room for her to miss him.

Starting to feel self-conscious, Sakura noticed that he was staring at her feet. After a perplexing moment, she laughed and glanced down at her shoes. So he _did_ notice the details.

"These aren't mine," she said, smiling up at him as he stared back at her, his face not giving anything away, and yet she was relatively sure she knew why he was staring, "in case you're wondering why this pair escaped being thrown at you."

"Hn." Sasuke nodded, and Sakura took this as a good enough confirmation of her suspicions.

-o0o-

She thought he had been staring at her shoes.

That, in the grand scheme of things, was infinitely better than what he'd actually been thinking.

She looked good. _Too_ good. With her pink hair and low cut neck-line, she'd attract way too much attention from the club's patrons. It was a bad idea to bring her along. Sasuke conceded, however, that it was a worse idea to let her stay at Naruto's and root around in his things in a strange fit of organizational need, lest she find something she ought not to.

Had she been like that in high school? It appeared that his going out of his way not to notice had been a serious tactical error on his part. He'd have to get on remedying his lack of knowledge of her as soon as he returned from his meet.

When had she acquired sexuality? Why was he noticing? These were the thoughts occupying his mind when Sakura had assumed he was fixated on her dangerous shoe choices. He had instead been fixated on his overwhelming desire to get as far away from her as possible, as quick as he Goddamn could.

In his line of business, sexuality was a weapon of manipulation. In the Game, attraction was a weakness – it's how you got destroyed, and seduction was the manipulation tactic of choice. The players put it on and turned it off thousands of times in a career in order to get what they wanted. He himself had done so more than a dozen times.

But this – his being 'intrigued' by this woman from his past, was out of his control. He was clearly exhausted. She was an evil, chatty, shoe-throwing beast, and an unfortunately necessary nuisance to his mission. It pissed him off that she was holding on to his attention even this long – no woman who wasn't a target ever had. Not since this same girl, ten years ago, had managed to penetrate his thoughts – _briefly – _when he was a naive teenager. She had been flitting across his mind far too often since she had spoken with him in the kitchen several days ago. Distance clearly needed to be kept.

Removing his hands from his pockets, he inclined his head towards the door.

"Let's go," he said curtly, opening the door and watching as Sakura glanced up at him curiously as she stepped outside with a quick wave to a relieved Naruto. This was going to be a long night.

-o0o-

The music was loud and pulsating around them as they entered the club, the force of the bass making the floor vibrate noticeably beneath Sasuke's feet. Multi-coloured strobe lights were flashing around, illuminating the dance floor and the crowds of people huddled close together, dancing and grabbing and sweating.

Not wanting to lose Sakura in the throng of people and suffer having to find her, Sasuke reached out and took hold of her elbow, glancing down at her dimly lit face as he did so. He was a little bit surprised by what he saw.

She had her nose scrunched up in what he could only interpret as distaste for the general environment. She took that moment to shoot him a look, and he quirked a dark eyebrow in response. She mumbled something, likely an answer to his look, but he couldn't hear it over the music blasting through the air.

"What?" He said loudly, leaning his head down closer to hers to be able to hear her better, before he stopped to contemplate if he even cared about what she had to say. Still, his interest had been piqued by her facial expression. Was a club not her scene? Somehow he had thought it would be, given her choice in friends.

Moments after that thought became fully formed, Sasuke discarded it. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to ever lump him in the same category as his idiotic blond teammate.

Sakura, evidently as surprised as he was by his apparent interest in what she had said, finally inched closer to him and lifted her lips closer to his ear. As she spoke, he could feel her warm breath caressing his ear, starkly different from the humid air being recycled about the club.

"I don't like clubs," she said, "they're just... too noisy, too crowded, and too..." she trailed off, momentarily distracted by the couple dancing closest to them – their bodies grinding together and with wandering hands, "...too jam packed with sexual tension."

Sasuke couldn't help the smirk that made it onto his face at her appropriate commentary. He had often felt similarly, but work was work... Thinking about work, Sasuke grabbed hold of her elbow tighter and began to pull her towards the bar, attempting to ignore his own tension that had surfaced at the feel of her breath on his ear. _Fuck_. It clearly had been too long.

"H-Hey!" Sakura grumbled in startled confusion, her arm held out awkwardly as he tugged her across the club.

Finding a vacant bar stool, Sasuke sat her down firmly, before leaning in closer, bracing his arms on the counter, and boxing her in. She gave a startled gasp as he dropped his head just above her right shoulder.

"Listen carefully," he stated, speaking coolly into her ear, "there is someone here I need to speak with. I know _you're_ not here because you desperately want to dance."

Sakura, still encased between the privacy shields formed by his arms, heaved a sigh and slumped forward, bracing her elbow on the counter and resting her chin on her palm. To any onlookers, they were just like any of the other couples in the club – intimately close, and maybe just a little tipsy. This had been his going plan since he knew he was bringing her along.

His being so close so as to notice the way she smelled, which was unfortunately absolutely delicious in comparison to the overwhelming fumes of the rest of the club's guests, had _not _been in the plan. Jesus God, what the _fuck _was wrong with him?

"Naruto doesn't like my organizational habits, so he pawned me off on you, right?" She said in a voice that confirmed to him that this wasn't a thought to newly cross her mind.

"Hn," Sasuke confirmed her suspicions and got his mind back on track. Not that he had any substantial doubts that she was here on other pretenses, but he still felt a miniscule amount of tension leave his body knowing that she was on the same page and he wouldn't have to babysit her.

"Sit here. Order a drink. I'll come get you when I'm done. Don't talk to anyone." He told her in a firm voice, but only loud enough for her alone to hear.

"And if someone talks to me?" Sakura questioned, tilting her head to look at him, their faces becoming intimately close. For a moment, her bright green eyes opened a fraction in surprise at their proximity, before she quickly regained her composure. But it was enough of a moment that it didn't go unnoticed by him; she wasn't nearly as skilled as he was at hiding reactions.

Her eyelashes were very... long, now that he was this close to her face. She was still staring at him, and it was obvious to him from her initial reaction that she felt something more than surprise within her when she realized how close their faces were.

How close their lips were.

_Shit_. This woman was a complication in and of itself – the last thing he needed was to have her harbour any kind of sexual attraction to him.

...He was drawing too much attention to the two of them now, the longer he spent in such close proximity to the pinkette without kissing her, as any onlookers would be expecting him to do. Needing to leave her in order to avoid creating added complications, he said a little too coldly, "then get rid of them. It can't be that hard."

Pushing off the counter, Sasuke shouldered past a dancing couple and disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor.

-o0o-

Sasuke leaned against an interior wall, adjacent to the crowded dance floor, and folded his arms loosely across his chest, channelling confidence and nonchalance. He projected with experienced ease the image of an overly confident man taking his time assessing which of the willing ladies on the dance floor he was going to steal for himself as the evening went on.

This spot had one of the best vantage points in the club – he could see the front entrance at one o'clock, and the fire escape on the west side of the room through the throngs of civilians, while simultaneously keeping the extremely popular bar easily in his peripheral vision. It didn't complicate matters that a head of pink hair was extremely easy to pick out in a crowd.

_Too easy_, Sasuke thought, carefully keeping any semblance of a frown from marring his perfectly concocted mask. He needed to finish this meet with a little more speed than usual, wary of the target Sakura's blatant presence in this club could paint on both of their backs. He shouldn't have caved to Naruto's pressure and brought her here. She could compromise the whole Op if someone had tailed them.

Sasuke took a calm inhale of breath. He knew he had nothing to worry about – no one had tailed them. He had been careful to take an overly complicated route through the busy city streets, weaving unnecessarily through underground tunnels just to be thorough. He was extremely confident in that regard. And yet, there was a nagging sensation pulling at the back of his mind as he watched a heavyset man with a hair line that was beginning to recede, take up a seat on the bar stool to Sakura's right.

"So you brought your girlfriend with you this time, did you?"

Sasuke did not so much as blink as the soft, feminine voice inches from his left ear signalled that his contact had arrived. Did not attempt to compliment the woman on how 'perceptive' she was, taking note of his constantly keeping the pinkette and her new best friend, who appeared to be trying to instigate a conversation, in his line of vision.

Big fucking deal. Anyone with even the basest of observation skills could assume that woman would be capturing at least his continuous partial attention.

Because of that God-awful head of hair.

Was why she was so eye-catching to everyone.

For no other reason other than that.

Sasuke almost broke his perfectly indifferent expression with a frown at how fucking stupid he was being in his head, trying to justify his own accurate assessment. For the love of fucking God, he clearly needed some sleep. And Sakura needed to make that fucker sitting beside her move on, because he was blocking Sasuke's line of vision of the relatively small but significant space between her and the front entrance.

"Hn."

"I would have thought you were smarter than that, bringing a girl into the Game," the woman, whom he had known only as Naomi for the past ten months, sidled up beside him, playing the part of the willing women who was seeking adventure with the handsome stranger in the bar. He did not have to so much as glance her way to know that she was dressed provocatively, as was her usual M.O.

In the game of seduction, Naomi, as Naruto often put it, held the "ultimate high score." She was beautiful. _Too _beautiful, and she knew it with every fibre of her miniscule being. With her deep brown eyes and long dark brown hair that poured over her shoulders, drawing attention to her ample, and very calculated, tasteful display of her chest, she could easily wrap a grown man around her finger.

Any grown man that wasn't Sasuke Uchiha. In her long list of conquests, she had yet to add him. Despite the genuine sounding cheer and interest that oozed from her whenever they met, he knew it pissed her right the fuck off that he didn't ever volunteer to do some extracurricular 'deep cover' work with her.

He knew the women in the Game. He knew what, and who, they often did. He wasn't going to be one of them. It wasn't that he had no interest in sex for the sake of sex. He absolutely could do that civic duty without so much as buying her a drink if he felt like it. But he didn't. These too beautiful, too calculated women did nothing for him.

He brought his thoughts back to Naomi's latest commentary in which she insulted his intelligence for bringing Sakura along; said in a sultry voice that he knew covered for her snarky feelings on the matter. But he would not be bated into bringing Sakura into this conversation. The less this viper knew about Sakura, the better for them all.

"You said you had some intel for me about the Snake." Sasuke said, blatantly ignoring her question and scanning the room again for any new faces.

_The Snake. _

No one in any agency or underground organization knew much about the mob boss who ran the most brutal, hardcore criminals in the country. His power and reputation was far reaching – his alias was enough to make grown men, guilty with failure, turn their own guns on themselves. When it came to the country's garden show of scum suckers, the Snake's notorious ruthlessness was more than enough to keep his underlings loyal and in the Game.

T:7 had been trying to unravel his identity and breakdown his networks for years. They never had a clear shot of his face – never had a solid idea of his location. If they could take out the Snake's immediate camp, fuck, Sasuke could just retire in a couple of years. The rest of the network would topple like dominos.

The Snake dappled in some small scale business – working the Black Market, theft, some government espionage. But he spent most of his time on murder. Assassination. Acts of terror to cause mass casualties and political upheaval, upsetting the equilibrium.

For what? That was the billion dollar question. No one seemed to know what the Snake really wanted – what his motive for murder and large scale shit-disturbing was. Sasuke was hoping that tonight's meet with his manipulative contact would shed some more light on that front.

Naomi had 'serviced' some men on Snake's crew while she moved her piece in the Game, gathering intel and eliminating anyone she deemed to be expendable. He assumed from her asking to meet him here tonight that she had finally picked up some valuable info that he could work with. In exchange, Sasuke and his team didn't hinder whatever operation she was running from this club. He didn't know what that was, but he also very often didn't give a shit.

He _did_ give a shit that Sakura hadn't yet managed to make the large man beside her move his ass and piss off. His presence was fucking with Sasuke's vantage point. He could barely see her. He wasn't worried about her so much as he was worried about her doing something stupid that he was too far away to prevent. At least, he wasn't worried about her _much_.

"There's been a lot of chatter," Naomi said, placing a familiar hand on his shoulder and leaning in to brush her lips against his ear as she spoke, "that the Snake is planning something big."

"Like what?"

"It's not immediately clear," she admitted, hardly audible over the pulsating bass of the new song blasting out of the speakers, "but word on the street is that it has to do with trafficking. Drugs, maybe."

Sasuke was suddenly starting to feel like his time was being wasted. _Drugs?_ Like he gave a shit about drugs. That was business Sasuke and his team was already very well aware of. He shot her a scathing look this time, heavy on the 'you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me'. Was this her big tip?

"Don't get your panties in a twist," she practically hissed at him, her nails digging into his shoulders just enough to let him know that she didn't appreciate his glare, but not enough to break their characters for the club's onlookers.

"A couple of underlings are shook up about it – they want out."

_Out?_ Now Naomi had his full attention.

No one ever got out of the Snake's grip. Not if they didn't want to live in fear and looking over their shoulders for the rest of their extremely short lives. What, Sasuke wondered, was scary about some drug trafficking, enough to spook the grunts? _That_ was something he would pay a lot to know.

_There's been a lot of chatter that the Snake is planning something big._

"They'll never live long enough on their own to make it out alive." Sasuke said what they both clearly had to know by now. The grunts wouldn't make it out of their hidey-hole before they got a hole clean through their head if word got out that they were trying to leave the _business_.

"Obviously," Naomi agreed with a slight shake of her head, before locking her extremely serious chocolate eyes with his dark ones. "That's why they want to cut a deal. If you give them protection, they're willing to talk about what's going to go down."

-o0o-

Sakura took a deep pull of her beer as she listened to the... substantial man beside her go on and on about the weather; his life story; her vibrant and rare shade of hair colour.

"Is it natural?" he asked her, his hands continuously running up and down the sides of his pint, cool and damp with condensation, "it's absolutely beautiful." He was nervously playing with the droplets of water while he attempted to flirt with her. Was her really so naive and nervous?

_God_, was this what things had come down to? She was extra baggage for the man she used to fancy herself in love with, discarded at the bar, being flirted with by a man who could very well be twice her age, and was very _definitely_ more than twice her size. And, for the life of her, she just did not possess enough skills as a frigid bitch to be able to make him move.

And lord, did she ever want him to move. He had managed to plant himself directly in her line of sight of Sasuke. Now, if she wanted to see if he was still talking to that gorgeous brunette, she would have to blatantly swivel her chair and maybe stand on her tippy-toes. Oh man, if she had third wheeled a date and was then caught staring, she was going to feel extra crappy by the time this night was over. Was there any other reason for him to be meeting with a well endowed, way-more-good-looking-than-Sakura, woman in a scene like this?

Although maybe, Sakura pondered as she drowned herself in another pull of misery induced drinking, the woman was a femme fatale. Maybe, she was actually someone Sasuke worked with.

Or slept with.

Sakura exercised every ounce of self-control she had not to let her head thump down on the scratched wood counter and groan exasperatedly at the pathetic woman she was becoming. What did she care what or who Sasuke did? It wasn't like she and Sasuke were anything. It wasn't like anything had changed since high school. In fact, Sakura bemoaned as she glanced towards the man beside her and still couldn't catch a glimpse of Sasuke's ebony hair, things had pretty much only gone further south where they were both involved.

At that thought, Sakura blushed a burning shade of pink and stared down at her drink, suddenly very fascinated by the bubbles coming and going. Less than 20 minutes ago, when she had turned to look at Sasuke while he spoke, and his lips had been so close to hers... her thoughts had definitely gone south. Way south. So south that she wanted to kick herself for letting her attraction to Sasuke resurface without so much as a... a compliment from the man.

And now the man beside her was staring at her like he had finally said something right, something to make her blush. _Was her hair naturally that colour_? Good lord.

"Yes," she croaked out finally, "yes it is."

_Please_, she begged inwardly, _please don't ask if you can see for yourself_. If it came to that, she was going to have to pull an Ino and hand this guy and his gee-wiz play his ass. In the mood she was quickly falling into, still thinking about Sasuke's lips and still worrying if that brunette knew what they tasted like and _still_ pissed that this man blocked her line of sight, she was so going to snap like a twig under a monster truck if her buttons got pushed.

And her hair was definitely a button.

"I've never known anyone with real pink hair before."

Sakura ran her left hand up her cheek and kneaded her temple, tilting her head a small amount to the right and inwardly begging for this night out to end as she gave the man her best _"you don't say?"_ look in her repertoire.

In the corner of her new peripheral vision, Sakura caught a glimpse of long blond hair out on the dance floor. Frowning, Sakura turned her head back to face the bar and tried to reason out the sudden foreboding feeling that was beginning to creep up her spine.

It was only because she had been thinking about Ino, Sakura attempted to convince herself. That's why any amount of blond hair would make her immediately think of her best friend.

_But that hair was really, really long. And really, really blond_.

Gulping nervously and with palms that were beginning to sweat a bit, Sakura tried to sneak an inconspicuous glance over her shoulder, back out at the dance floor.

And there, lit up by the club's strobe light, and heading straights towards the bar – to _her – _were Ino _and_ Ten Ten, dressed up for a night out at the clubs.

"SHIT!" Sakura cursed violently as she hastily threw herself off the bar stool and onto the floor. Down on her hands and knees, Sakura frantically looked around her, but all she could see were shins and too high shoes as she muttered a foul mantra of _"shit crap shit fuck shit shit shit!" _under her breath.

Why were they _here_?! There were more than enough clubs in Konoha for the pair to be out crawling. Why THIS one? Why THIS night?

The sound of a voicemail went off in the back of Sakura's mind as she wondered in horror what the stickiness on the bottom of her hand was.

_Ten-Ten and I are hitting up the clubs over in the next city sometime this week. You should come with!_

No way. _No freaking way_.

Sakura had to get out of the club before she was spotted by Ino and Ten-Ten, who were literally going to be on top of her if she didn't get her lobster crawling ass up off the floor and high-tailing it towards the door in the next few seconds.

If she was spotted by them... after she never returned that voicemail, and never showed up to work, which Ino no doubt would have tried calling next to get a hold of her – there would be questions. So many questions. And God forbid they see Sasuke.

Sakura would be in shit. Deep, _deep _shit. She knew she was already hindering whatever operation Sasuke was working on. If the _one night_ he takes her with her anywhere she messes it up just by _existing_, she was never, ever, going to be able to live it down.

And more to the point, if her being seen by her two close friends drags them into this danger with her and ends with either of them getting hurt, she was going to die a thousand deaths.

With that thought, Sakura launched herself up off the floor, ignoring the absolutely baffled look from the tipsy man above her, and booked it towards what she thought was the general direction of the exit.

-o0o-

_What the fuck?_

Sasuke was having a hard time believing his eyes.

A flash of pink – he had Sakura back in his sights – and then she was gone. _Gone_. Just like that.

Adrenaline, a small dose of anxiety and a metric ass-load of pissed off started pounding through his system as he tried to scan the room, looking for her. He had told her to stay put. Not to move. And she couldn't even follow that _one_ simple instruction.

But he had seen the look on her face when he had finally regained a full visual of her. It was only for a fraction of a second, but he had seen it.

Fear. Full-blown fear and concern had marred her features before she disappeared into the crowd. What had happened? What had she seen? Had she been made?

Sasuke felt his anxiety levels ratchet up another notch as he suspected that maybe she'd recognized one of the goons that had broken into her house. If that were the case, she was _not_ going to be okay on her own. Even though they were relatively new to their gig, they were skilled enough for her.

Sasuke absolutely did not like the bead of fear that had settled in his gut as he thought of Sakura, out in that crowd, alone with those bastards from Konoha.

"Set up a meet," Sasuke ground out to Naomi, who merely raised a delicate eyebrow at his tense speech, "for two nights from today. At the apartment complex under construction on 6th. I'll meet them there and hear what they have to say."

"I'll let you know when it's done." Naomi cooed as she backed away into the crowd, and Sasuke wasted no time in launching out into the sea of people, unceremoniously pushing between dancers and drinkers as he tried to keep his cool and find the troublesome pinkette.

_She's not in trouble_. He told himself. _She's not made. We weren't followed_.

But still he couldn't stamp down his got-a-bad-feeling and replace it with disgust for her inability to follow simple instructions. She was not a stupid woman. There had to be a good reason why she ran.

And there had to be a good reason for why he was being anything other than calm and calculating about this turn of events. This Op could be finally getting somewhere, he told himself. If it were to be compromised...

A flash of pink, and Sasuke was on her in a nano-second. Grabbing Sakura by her shoulders and hauling ass towards a somewhat secluded corner by the front entrance, Sasuke shoved her against the wall and slammed his hand down beside her head, telling himself that he was releasing his anger over her leaving her stool, not fear over losing sight of her.

"What in the _fuck_ are you doing?"

Her green eyes were staring at him in wide eyed panic.

"Sasuke!" she gasped, "we have to get out of here. _Now_."

"Why?" he countered, his voice cold and harsh with frustration. Even though she looked panicked, and even though he should probably believe that whatever she was running from was legitimate, he had to know the details. Because if he knew what she was running from, he could probably figure out if she risked running _into_ it, too.

"They're here!"

"Who?" His onyx eyes narrowed, and he quickly made another cursory glance about the room for the thugs from Konoha.

"Ino and Ten-Ten!"

"What?" _Ino and Ten-Ten._ He knew those names. Why did he know those names?

"Ino. And. Ten-Ten. My friends – they're here, in this club!" she ground out, casting a frantic glance over his shoulder, "and if they see me, if they see _you_, we are going to be subjected to a never ending world of questions. Worse than what I did to you, Sasuke."

"And you're going to end up with two new additions to Naruto's happy home because if they get seen with us, and they risk getting hurt, I am going to personally kill you." She added with a fierce glare.

Jesus H. Christ. Just what he needed.

Sasuke looked around again, about a foot lower than he had previously been scanning, and he saw them now, too. They looked about what he would expect them to look like after almost ten years, and they were close, too close, and bearing down on the door they were practically next to. Sasuke did the math in his head and, cursing low under his breath, realized that they wouldn't be able to make it out the door without being seen.

He didn't need this. He absolutely didn't need this. And Sakura was staring at him expectantly, as if to say, "if we get caught, _you_ can have the luxury of doing all the explaining. You _ass."_

What a goatfuck.

Exhaling a breath of intense frustration, he backed Sakura as far into the poorly lit corner wall as he possibly could, and tried to use his large frame to shield her from view. Those women hadn't seen him since high school – he would bet his career on the fact that they wouldn't recognize him now, in this poorly let entranceway.

But what they _would_ recognize was the vibrant pink of their good friend's hair, who they no doubt saw on a semi-regular basis. He had to hide her more, and he was swiftly running out of options as they got closer.

He knew what he had to do.

Bracing his left forearm against the wall next to her head and covering as much of her hair as he could with his right hand, Sasuke leaned in and covered her body completely with his.

This was the only play available to him. A public display of affection in a shady corner of the club. Most people would look away or steer clear. He was 99 percent sure it was going to work. It only had to last until the women cleared the front door in less than a minute.

He could feel Sakura's ragged and nervous breath tickling his throat as he bent his head down and, with only the slightest hesitation, captured her pink lips in his.

For a long moment, she was frozen in place, her lips unmoving as he kissed her lightly, just a press of his lips against hers. But then it was apparent that she realized what was happening, and good God, she started kissing him back.

One of her hands gripped the open collar of his dress shirt, the other still splayed against his chest from when she was urging him to leave the club. He was hyper aware of every part of her body, but also extremely distracted by the feel of her soft lips moving against his, by the attraction he could feel buzzing through her and straight into him as she gripped his collar tighter and subconsciously pulled him closer.

When she opened her mouth to him and brushed her thigh against his, he felt all his tension shoot straight down into his groin. His grip tightened in her hair and he kissed her longer, harder, his mouth practically devouring hers as he tasted the drink she had been having at the bar.

And for the first time in his career, Sasuke's mind went completely blank.

* * *

><p><strong><span>(AN)<span> As per usual, I apologize for the long wait between chapters! For any of you readers who were internally pooping chickens in fear of me making Sasuke dance at the club... yeah, there was no way I'd be able to write that. Him getting groovy was never on my to do list. That said, I hope you guys enjoyed what I actually did want to happen!**

**Please leave me a review – they are my fruit, and I am pacman. :D**

**~dancer-me**


	9. To Think You Know Someone

**~A Dangerous Game~**

**Chapter IX: To Think You Know Someone**

**(AN) Hey there, it's been awhile.** **Please read and enjoy, and we can catch up at the end of the chapter. **

**-o0o-**

Sakura was frozen in place.

She had no clue what was going on – one moment Sasuke was seething at her, darkly angry about her inability to follow his instructions and stay put while she'd tried to explain her actions. The next, she'd found herself pressed up against a wall in a dark, dingy corner of the dark, steamy club. His hands framed her head and his body boxed her in. She would have thought to feel claustrophobic had she been in possession of enough of her faculties to feel anything but shock and, unfortunately, the hot tendrils of arousal pooling in her abdomen.

She was so hopelessly attracted to this man. Had she really been foolish enough to think that denial would eventually morph into reality?

Sasuke's thighs were wedged so closely between her legs that she suspected if she went completely slack, she wouldn't move an inch. She decided to test the theory, and couldn't stifle the small gasp that escaped her lips as she slipped down the barest amount, but that was all it took to press her extremely sensitive core against his muscled thigh.

She was completely sure she had forgotten how to use any and every muscle in her body and the only thing keeping her upright was his firm body pressed hard against hers. She had also, were she to have had the benefit of hindsight, completely lost control of her brain. Because up until that moment, she would've sworn she had one.

And she would've sworn she had self-control.

Sasuke Uchiha was kissing her. Sakura gasped in shocked surprise, her hand contracting and clutching his dark shirt tight in a vice grip. How long had his lips been on hers before her brain learned how to reboot itself? She had no clue.

God, she didn't understand why he was kissing her. It was just the smallest, simplest contact of lips, but her body was on fire, the heat of her attraction burning its way low in her tummy, and she couldn't help it. Shamelessly, she pushed herself an inch forward and kissed him back.

Sakura was acutely aware of the tension she felt turn his hard body even more rock solid when she moved her lips against his. She tried to press herself even closer to him, needing to feel more of his body heat, but she was already so flush against him that all her efforts accomplished was a slight brush of her thigh against his.

The brush was enough for her to notice the bulge in his pants, pressed tightly against her abdomen. He was attracted to her. All of his _bullshit_ and he was hard from just the simplest kiss with her.

The thought was shocking and exhilarating.

Sasuke seemed to take her surprised gasp as an open-mouthed invitation to deepen the kiss. His lips moved against hers, capturing her bottom lip in a move that was turning this barely-there kiss into the hottest make-out session she'd had in only God knew how long.

Sakura couldn't help the head-rush that his obvious arousal brought upon her. Neither could she resist acting on the new-found confidence surging through her, now that she knew Sasuke was enjoying this unexpected kiss as much as she was.

She opened her mouth against his lips, wanting more. Wanting to gently tug his soft bottom lip with her teeth; hoping more than a little that he would explore her mouth with his tongue. His grip tightened in her hair. It maybe would have been painful any other day, but at this moment it earned Sasuke a small, pleasured gasp slipping out from between her lips.

Sakura squirmed in his embrace, futilely trying to press herself even closer to him. The heat of his chest against her breasts was like an electric current of arousal shooting through her and charging her whole being. She moaned into his mouth as his tongue slipped into hers, granting her earlier wish. Their tongues battled for dominion of her mouth, but she knew she would lose.

Even in kissing, Sasuke demanded control, and in kissing, she had no qualms in giving it up to him. The man kissed exactly how she had fantasized he would.

His left arm slipped from bracing the wall beside her head, and soon his left hand joined his right in her hair. Swiftly and sensuously, his hand slid down to cup the back of her neck and pull her closer yet to him.

They kissed, long and hard, a tangle of tongues as Sakura let her hands roam what she could touch of his broad chest that she wasn't already firmly pressed against. She could feel his heat, feel the strength of his shoulders and tenseness of his muscles.

Hyperaware of his groin pressed up against her extremely sensitive core, Sakura moved just the tiniest amount, desperate for some friction. She rubbed herself against him, gasping into his mouth, around his tongue, as liquid fire shot through her. She felt Sasuke press himself firmly against her, hot and hard and God, she could practically feel her orgasm building low in her belly just from grinding shamelessly against this man.

But amidst the haze of attraction and arousal that was consuming her, a little, terribly unwanted voice in the back of her head was telling her this wasn't real.

That it couldn't be real.

That Sasuke wouldn't just kiss her without a purpose. Without some sort of utility or strategic gain associated with the action. She at least knew that much about the man.

Reality was a terrible, horrible thing, and it seemed to crash into both her and Sasuke at the exact same, horrifying moment.

Sasuke practically sprang away from her, putting a good foot of distance between him and her heaving chest. She was breathless from his kisses and her arousal; gasping for air so obviously she couldn't manage to hide it. She felt an embarrassed blush burning into her cheeks, and, tragically, pathetically, hoped that he would see only embarrassment and not the remnants of her simmering arousal.

Desperately, she tried to recall what had created this situation in the first place. She closed her eyes, needing to tear herself away from staring into Sasuke's dark gaze. For just a fleeting moment, she'd seen a look of pure shock consume his features. But it was just a moment, before it disappeared as if he had never been anything but composed with an undercurrent of intensely controlled irritation, as per usual.

She had left the bar. He had explicitly asked her not to move, but she had. She'd thrown herself onto the floor in the most undignified way and attempted to flee the club. Why? Why had she done that?

_Ino and Ten-Ten_.

A rush of mortification creeped up her spine, her neck, and burned her cheeks an even deeper crimson.

Sasuke had pressed her against the wall to hide her from her friends.

His chaste kiss had been for the benefit of unknown onlookers, creating a story of a couple finding a private corner to engage in some physical affection.

It had been nothing more than a means to an end.

And she had gone crazy, rubbing herself against him, kissing him, fisting her hands in the collar of his dress shirt she had been so preoccupied with admiring on him hours before.

She was absolutely, positively, indisputably, horrified.

The cold mortification that came with the realization of Sasuke's intentions and her own reaction was like throwing a buck of ice water inside her very being. Any arousal left in her disappeared in a burst of smoke, leaving only emotional destruction in its wake.

She needed to say something. She needed to be the person to break this silence between them; say something smart or witty to pretend the last however many minutes of extreme personal gratification on her part had never happened.

But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out.

Before she could try again, Sasuke's deep voice, sounding rougher and more gravelly than usual, cut between them.

"They're long gone. We need to go."

Nodding wordlessly, Sakura let Sasuke grab her arm, as she'd later note surprisingly gently, and guide her out of the club and into his car.

-o0o-

"Hey guys, how was the club?" Naruto called out from his office as he heard the distinct sound of his front door being unlocked and pushed open. Stepping out of the room and leaning against the door frame, he watched first with amusement, but that soon enough fell into concern as Sakura first came through the door, a stricken and dazed look on her face, despite her attempts to hide the look.

Quickly, Naruto threw his glance the way of Sasuke, expectantly searching for some sort of silent explanation about what went down in the few hours they had been out. But Sasuke didn't look like he was going to be of any help at all, as he closed and locked the door behind him with deceptive gentility.

The blond darted his gaze back and forth between the two, trying to figure out what was going on. If Sasuke's meet had been a bust, the man would have closed the door with a lot more prejudice.

Without so much as a glance in his direction, the pair trudged, single file, up his staircase and turned down the upper hall in opposite directions.

"Good night out, then," Naruto called out up the stairs after the retreating pair, "my night was pretty eventful, too, thanks for asking."

His cheerful sarcasm was met with the sound of two doors slamming shut – with extreme prejudice.

Naruto scrunched up his face in confusion, continuing to stare up the staircase, as if he hoped the answer to his friends' weird behaviour would come tumbling down to meet him.

_Someone_ was going to have to fill him in on what had happened.

-o0o-

_Oh God._

Sakura sat on the edge of her bed, wishing for the life of her that the mattress would suddenly morph into quicksand and gurgle and swallow her whole.

Instead, she had to suffice with burying her head in her hands, her palms pressing against her burning cheeks.

_Sasuke had kissed her to shield them from Ino and Ten-Ten._

How could she have been such a fool as to not have gathered at least that much from his sudden, seemingly inexplicable change in behaviour? He had never once shown interest in her. Why would he ever start then and there? Sure, they had been building a rapport of sorts since she'd thrown a few punches in the kitchen several days ago, but that didn't suddenly mean that he wanted her as anything more than an acquaintance.

While impossible, she still tried to bury her face even further into her hands. She had become a maelstrom of awkward situations. The turbulence of _that_ had been growing since she started throwing shoes at Sasuke, a mere _week_ ago.

She was a Goddamn _professional_. She went through the last _nine years_ of her life being revered as successful and in command of situations. Many in the medical discipline, if she indulged her desperately in-need at the moment ego, called her brilliant. True, she could at times be over-dramatic, and did have to admit that she had a temper fuse the size of something akin to a toothpick, but those traits were neither here nor there.

Her point, in any case, was that she had managed to live a perfectly acceptable, fully functioning life for the last nine years. But then, as soon as Sasuke became involved in her life, everything had gone to hell in a hand basket. Between thinking he was crazy and her incessant, cringe-worthy barrage of questioning that she'd thrown at him, she hadn't thought she could be anymore embarrassed where that man was involved.

But _noo_.

He'd kissed her, as dark characters like Sasuke had become were wont to do, and she'd completely lost the cool she'd managed to establish over the last few days together in Naruto's house with him.

The way he'd so abruptly pulled back from her in the club... how was she supposed to deal with that? How were _they_ going to deal with what had happened? Sakura attempted to fight the feelings of embarrassment and hopelessness that were swirling through her.

She wasn't fooling herself when she thought that they'd started to form some kind of connection again. She wouldn't call it friendship, per se, but he had definitely warmed up to her presence from his subzero treatment of her back on Day One.

But what now? Now that she'd gone and taken his deceptive kissing move and turned it into something far bigger than it was ever meant to be, was his tolerance for her going to go back to square one?

_He's probably regretting right now ever rescuing me back in Konoha_, Sakura's evil inner voice sardonically pondered.

Sakura exhaled a deep sigh, trying to release with her breath all the awkward tension building up inside her. She flopped backwards on her bed, bouncing slightly on the bedspread. She brushed her fingers through her hair and lay there, staring at the ceiling for some indeterminate amount of time, simply mulling her entire situation over.

Ever since she and Sasuke had run into each other, they'd been causing nothing but trouble for the other person. Sasuke got her caught up in all this, and he'd been forced to take her on as extra baggage. Ever since she'd learned what his occupation was several days ago, why he'd been shot at... she'd been trying to stay out of his way. Trying to make amends for being so completely off-balance in their first few days of reunion, while she tried to keep her mind off everything that was happening to her.

But she was only human. How much more of this could she possibly endure? She was scared. She knew full well that her personal and professional life was going to suffer immensely because of the wheels that had begun turning. Hadn't she been away from the hospital for over a week now? Her patients couldn't afford to wait for her.

She had to trust Sasuke to keep her physically safe, but who was going to keep her emotionally safe from the man? Foolishly, she'd thought she wasn't at risk. That her old feelings were actually _old_, and not going to come back, full force, and throw her under the proverbial bus.

But, _oh God_, as she continued to lie on her bed in Naruto's guestroom, she could just picture the very real bus-load of complication that was attempting to suffocate her.

The pinkette threw herself over onto her stomach and buried her face in a pillow. She knew she had to be practical about this. She couldn't spend the rest of her days, hiding in her room – hiding from Sasuke. She simply had to suck it up, throw back her shoulders, and dispel the elephant she was sure was going to be joining them in the house. She knew she was going to find it practically impossible to revert back to their civil, growing understanding of each other if she didn't clear the air.

And she, having opened the Pandora's box that contained her old feelings for this man, knew that she really wanted to know him. Needed to do her best to keep from losing him in her life again, however melodramatic or hopeless that idea seemed.

So she'd kissed him. Big deal. Being as handsome as he was, she'd bet her shares in her family business that he'd been kissed plenty of times before.

And then... Sasuke had kissed her back, hadn't he? And what did _that_ mean for their tentative relationship?

Sure, his initial kiss had been one hundred percent utility and meant to hide them from her friends. That's why it had been so chaste. That's why it had even happened to begin with. But when she'd kissed him back, hadn't _he_ been the one to take the kiss further still? Hadn't _he_ put _his_ tongue in _her _mouth? She couldn't have made him do that herself.

And _further_, Sakura fisted her hands in the abused pillow as her mind whirled, when she'd pushed herself against him, hadn't _he_ slid his hand down to hold the back of her neck in a way that had her igniting even more in his embrace?

It took two to get tangled in something like that, and she was certainly not alone.

That thought did wonders to ease her embarrassment and discomfort over the whole ordeal. So she'd temporarily lost it and become an absolute wanton in his arms. But he'd had some pretty telltale signs that, at least physically, he'd liked it too.

What did that mean? What did that say about them? About him?

Sakura stopped herself before she rode that thought train any further. She refused to become a woman who overanalyzed every single detail and spun attractive tales of fantasy out of thin threads of facts and conjecture. If she was a big girl, she'd go talk to him about what had happened. It would be the mature thing to do.

But she could just imagine it: _"So, Sasuke. About tonight, when you had your tongue in my mouth and I was clinging to you desperately... what's the story on that? Are we good?"_

On second thought, there was no way she could bring herself to breach that subject. Not yet. She still had the image of Sasuke's disgruntled expression, after he'd jumped away from her as if she was on fire, seared into her memory.

What in the hell was she going to do?

-o0o-

Sasuke sat at his desk in the dark, his room illuminated only by the glow emanating from his laptop screen.

He was unsettled. It was not a feeling he was accustomed too.

He'd lost control back in the club with Sakura, and the thought rattled him more than his actions did.

And his actions were fucking concerning.

What had happened back there? He'd shoved Sakura into a nearby corner and tried to shield her from view as much as possible with his body. He'd made a calculated guess that kissing her would be the most effective tactic if he wanted them to blend in with the crowd. Not surprisingly, he'd been correct, since from the moment he'd pressed his lips against Sakura's, the two women they had been avoiding had disappeared.

The kiss should have stopped there. It had served his purpose. His original plan had been to hold the infuriating women against that wall for the few minutes required until he knew being noticed by Ino and Ten-Ten was no longer a threat. Then, he was going to haul her ass outside, throw her in his car, and have a serious discussion about following orders. That meeting was going to be followed by a long workout, wherein Sasuke tried to expel the adrenaline her disappearance had sent coursing through him.

But he'd deviated. He had expected her incomprehensible temper to make an appearance over his rough handling of her. Instead, she'd surprised him by kissing him back instead of trying to dismember him for grabbing her, and all his adrenaline had been quickly rerouted. And it had resulted in him taking advantage of her. _Jesus fuck_.

Sasuke's mind didn't go blank. He didn't just check out in the middle of a situation. But it had and he did. When he'd gotten a fucking hold on himself, he'd been kissing Sakura, _hard_, and holding her in a grip she hadn't had a hope of getting out of.

He should've pulled away then. Put some distance between them and re-assessed the situation.

Sasuke leaned back in his chair, staring sightlessly at his blinking computer screen. His arms, crossed just beneath his chest, were taught and tense. He was tense. His hands were balled into fists.

What he was looking at, introspectively, was the makings of a huge fucking problem. Had he not acknowledged just _hours_ ago, standing in the foyer of this house, that his continuing interest in Sakura was out of his control and concerning enough that it warranted some serious distance needing to be kept going forward?

Kissing her for cover had been a huge mistake. He was attracted to her. Attraction was a weakness. And Sasuke Uchiha didn't have any weaknesses. It was part of what made him such a great operative.

But kissing Sakura had felt good. _Too_ fucking good, and he hadn't been capable of stopping himself. It had been a long time since a woman had had that effect on him. Why _Sakura Haruno_? Why _her_? He hardly knew anything about her, other than what he'd learned in the last week and what he remembered from their days as teenagers together.

Uncrossing his arms, Sasuke learned forward and took hold his mouse. He pulled up an encrypted database, entered in his credentials, and furiously began to type. At least there was something useful he could do with his mind right now, instead of replaying that scene from the club, wherein he'd been grinding against her, thinking with his body and not his brain.

She was an attractive woman. She was intelligent. As much as she'd pissed him off profusely during their first few days together, he'd conceded that she was handling this dramatic upheaval of her life better than most. She had calmed down immensely since then. He'd begun to acknowledge a respect for who she was when she wasn't throwing physical and verbal shit at him.

He knew she was attracted to him. Maybe she hadn't known herself, but after the look in her eyes when he left her at the bar earlier, he'd had no doubt. He had considered it an unnecessary complication for her to develop a sexual attraction to him. But then he'd been blindsided by his own physical attraction to _her_.

_Fucking infuriating woman._ After he'd come to his senses and pushed himself away from her, he'd been shocked with both himself and the look of her. She'd been dishevelled; her lips bruised from his kisses, hair messy from his hands, her chest rising and falling with her gasps for air. She'd been speechless, but he knew it was only going to be temporary. Sooner or later she was going to realize that he'd kissed the shit out of her and then completely redirected the topic.

Sasuke was tense. Sooner or later, she was going to want to know just what the hell that had been back there, between them. Their relationship prior to that hadn't exactly been sunshine and _fucking daisies._ But he couldn't tell her shit, because he didn't understand where that had come from, either.

And as far as he was willing to be concerned, it didn't change or mean a _thing_. It had been a momentary lapse in judgement wherein, like a fucking idiot, he'd been thinking with his dick.

Finally finding what he'd been looking for, Sasuke clicked on the familiar name in the long list of background files the agency kept on everyone that it knew existed.

_Name: Sakura Haruno_

_Birthdate: March 28_

_Age: 27_

_Eye Colour: Green_

_Hair Colour: Pink_

_Blood Type: O_

_Marital Status: Single_

_Current Employment: Attending General Surgeon at Konoha General Hospital_

Sakura's file.

Sasuke's eyes rapidly scanned the document, taking in all it had to say about the pink-haired girl. Sasuke, having decided he needed to do a background check on her eventually, figured that there was no better time than the present.

He already knew the basics about her: name, hair colour, eye colour, employment, and family. But it was the other information that he was interested in. Her education was just like she'd said it was the night they'd re-met. She graduated high school on the honour roll, fast-tracked her way through her Bachelor's of Science in Human Physiology, and went on to Medical School. Her performance reports during her internships and residency at Konoha General showed that she had been something of a prodigy, and was quickly promoted and moved up the ranks to where she could be utilized to the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness.

_Hn._ She was brilliant and good at her job.

Sasuke continued to read the reports, and quickly realized that she was also a workaholic. The hours she worked and the cases she'd worked on left very little time for her to have been anywhere else but at the hospital.

No wonder she had been going stir crazy, being stuck here in Naruto's home. He was beginning to understand exactly what she'd had to walk away from, because of this case. It was a necessity – it could not have gone any other way. But still, he was noting similarities between Sakura and himself: their work was their life, and they were both very good at what they did.

Scrolling down the document, Sasuke continued to take in Sakura's background and known associates. Nothing surprising there. The woman was squeaky clean. She didn't even have a parking ticket.

Sasuke frowned.

What she _did_ have was a controlling interest in a numbered medical supply company, with the elected name of Haruno Medical Incorporated. But she had mentioned this at some point to him too, hadn't she? That her family had a medical supply business?

He remembered part of a conversation of sorts that they had had back at the motel.

"_I have access to some drugs and equipment that are only medical issue because my family owns the medical drug company... I have ownership rights over the company, but I don't spend too much time dealing with the corporate end of things."_

What she had were 50 Class A Voting Common Shares, and 100 Class A Preferred Shares. She had ownership rights and controlling interests in the company, along with the rest of her family members and a few others. Frowning, Sasuke looked at the net worth of the business.

_Shit_, she didn't even need to be working. With the amount of ownership she had in her family's business, she could never work another day in her life and live extremely comfortably. So why, then, did she work so many hours at the hospital? Did she choose not to be actively involved with the business?

Technically, she was more than financially well-off. But he'd been in her house - it had been simple, lived in, but only just. It was nothing special, practically barren of anything but furniture staples, as if she was hardly ever there. The only room that had looked as if she had disposable income was her bedroom, because of that deceptively harmless closet.

Again, her living space was like his. He had an apartment, but he was never there. He travelled frequently, but when he was back in the country he usually stayed with Naruto. It was the most efficient and effective way to get going on their next mission if they could meet face to face.

The woman was intelligent and a workaholic. This was not new information to him, but at the same time, the story her file told was... enlightening. She was exactly who she said she was.

Sasuke frowned and closed her file. Had he been hoping that something in her file would cause him to revert back to finding her pervasively irritating? Perhaps. He hadn't expected to find himself drawing similarities between himself and the small woman with the big temper. They couldn't be more different.

Sasuke knew what his official file said about him.

_Nothing_.

He'd made sure that there was nothing out there about him. That he was a ghost. A terrifying apparition that walked in the shadows of the targets he took down.

But he knew what it would say, if it had existed.

It would say that he was a perfect candidate for espionage and conflict management. No family, no strings tying him to a particular location. No weaknesses.

Sasuke closed the lid to his laptop, and threw a look at the door to his room.

He had no weaknesses.

But Sakura, now, was proving to be a growing distraction.

A distraction that could become a weakness – if he let it go that far.

He needed to figure out what he was going to say, going to _do_, about what had happened.

What the hell was he going to do about Sakura Haruno?

-o0o-

"Step into my office," Naruto said, accompanying his comment with a grand, sweeping gesture at the room around him.

"What do you want, Naruto?" Sasuke bit out, not moving from his position leaning against the door frame.

Naruto's smiled faded and he turned serious.

"What happened last night, Sasuke?"

"That's none of your business."

"So your pissy mood and Sakura's hiding in her room has nothing to do with the mission then," Naruto said, "and everything to do with you."

Hook, line, and sinker. Naruto had Sasuke caught, right where he wanted him.

**-o0o-**

**(AN) A few things for all of you who have been waiting around for over a year for me to update this story – once again, I'm sorry for the long wait. But it is what it is. I made the decision to try to get back into my fanfiction earlier this week, and there was no better place to start than with ADG. I'm sorry that there wasn't much in the way of plot advancement, after so long a wait. I'd always planned for this chapter to be all about character development, and a look in Sasuke and Sakura's feelings. **

**I have lots to say but I don't want to bog down this story with info about me and my plans – if you're interested, you can take yourself over to my profile page and hopefully have your questions answered. For returning readers –thanks for sticking with this story, and I hope this story still continues to entertain you! For all new readers – be forewarned, I've disappeared twice on this story already. But we can all dream that that won't happen again, right?**

**If you're enjoying this story, please leave a review before you go! Reviews are a huge inspiration for me to continue with writing my stories, because I know that there are people who have continued to follow it and want to see what happens next. **

**A huuuuuge thank you to all my readers for your continued support!**

**~dancer-me**


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